A 16-year-old girl in Zhoukou, Henan Province, dropped out of high school and was lured into the live broadcast industry under false pretenses when she was looking for a job. She had to call the top performer “husband” to gain favor, and would be deducted money for being just a few seconds late. After working for 2 months, she only received 2000 RMB.
According to mainland China’s “Extreme News,” Mu Yao (pseudonym) had just turned 16 this year and left school before graduating. In the first half of this year, she saw a recruitment notice on a certain job-seeking app from a local live broadcast company claiming a guaranteed salary of 4000 RMB for front desk positions, with the potential to earn tens of thousands. When she arrived, she discovered that the front desk position was just a facade and the company actually wanted to recruit broadcasters.
“They said being a broadcaster is great, kept talking to me about being a broadcaster, and I didn’t see any front desk positions at the company,” Mu Yao said. The staff even instructed her to lie to her parents about working as a front desk employee at the company.
Persuaded by the staff, Mu Yao joined the company. Once on board, the company gave her an account under an adult’s name for real-name authentication and informed her that she needed to broadcast for a minimum of 26 days a month, for 6 hours each day to receive the guaranteed salary of 4000 RMB. Otherwise, she would only earn commissions.
Mu Yao also revealed that earning a high salary was not easy. “You have to always call the top performer ‘husband’ to keep him happy,” she said. The company strictly controlled aspects like the duration of the live broadcast, content, and attire, and she would be penalized for any lapses, sometimes even enduring borderline content in the live streams.
After working for over two months, Mu Yao resigned. The company cited lack of one-month prior notice and withheld part of her salary. In the end, she only received one month’s salary of 2000 RMB. Another performer, Yi Nuo (pseudonym), who started at the same time as her as a broadcaster, fared even worse, receiving only a few hundred RMB. Yi Nuo disclosed that there were broadcasters in the company who were under 16 years old.
Reportedly, Mu Yao and Yi Nuo mainly broadcasted on the Momo platform. However, searching on a job-seeking app for live broadcasting positions in Zhoukou revealed numerous companies offering similar positions. After randomly consulting over a dozen local live broadcast companies, it was clear that when they mentioned they were under 16 years old, only some companies outright rejected them, while many requested to see photos or conduct face-to-face interviews. The company where Mu Yao previously worked even explicitly stated that “you can broadcast even if you’re under 16, as long as you don’t look too young.”
Following the exposure of the incident, on June 3, some performers had already signed settlement agreements with the relevant companies and recovered part of their salaries.
This incident has sparked public outrage, with netizens commenting, “This is absolutely outrageous!” “This is simply chaos.” “These are just rubbish live broadcast companies, they should be heavily fined and shut down to bankruptcy! Those who break the law should be arrested and sentenced.” “Providing adult accounts to circumvent regulation, the platform’s review mechanism is virtually non-existent and must be strictly regulated!” “These companies are outrageous, using children who are naive to deceive them into signing such contracts. They must be severely punished!”