In a public square in Chongqing, a formation of men in suits and heavy white foundation marches forwards and backwards in perfect unison. At the centre stand Long Haotian, a breakdancer who represented China at the Youth Olympics, and his streaming partner Yao Yao, who speaks in a high-pitched baby voice and reacts with exaggerated, cartoonish expressions. They bark catchphrases at an invisible audience, thanking viewers on Douyin, Kuaishou and RedNote (known internationally as Xiaohongshu) for their donations. When engagement hits a preset threshold, Yao Yao turns to reveal her face. A trance-like track loops in the background: "When the bass gets bumpin' up in the club / Pour another shot and show me some love."
"Understood nothing but could not stop watching," wrote one Western viewer. "This is so bizarre but I will watch them in full," added another. "Why do I keep watching these," asked a third.
Precisely nothing of consequence occurs during these broadcasts. Yet the format, known as tuanbo or "group livestreams", is exploding. Industry projections show revenue leaping from 15 billion yuan ($2.2 billion) last year to 40 billion yuan ($5.8 billion) in 2024. Clips ripped from Chinese platforms and reposted on TikTok routinely attract tens of thousands of likes; one has surpassed half a million.
A format engineered for hyperstimulation
The Chongqing troupe is not an anomaly. Whenever tuanbo content crosses onto Western feeds, it commands rapt attention. The formula is calibrated for maximum sensory input: saturated colours, earworm music, relentless call-and-response with a hidden chat. In other streams, pavements are lined with ring lights, each framing a young woman selling plastic goods or soliciting donations. Some broadcasts feature performers on wave-machine surfboards; viewership spikes when they fall. Others stage lines of teenagers who repeat the same dance until exhaustion, real or performed, sets in. A subset mimics high-pressure factory shifts under a scowling foreman. The logic is circular and empty, yet the repetition itself proves satisfying. Many of these "live" streams are in fact pre-recorded loops, a detail viewers rarely detect because the format is so rigid.
Collective performance versus individual stardom
The appeal does not rest on sex appeal, outrageousness or originality. It rests on absurdity delivered on demand. Western influencer culture prizes authenticity, glamour and charisma, a lineage traceable to Hollywood. Chinese idol culture prizes cohesion. Tuanbo performers render themselves generic, moving like automatons, reciting catchphrases on cue. There is no pretence of intimacy. Yao Yao's baby voice is a stock character, not a personality. On the Western internet the individual is the star; on the Chinese internet success means functioning as a highly efficient unit. The two content ecosystems reflect divergent philosophies.
Achieving this flat, robotic effect requires extraordinary discipline. China's streaming stars rehearse meticulously, executing choreographed set-pieces that resemble a call centre or production line more than a television show. The regimentation often feels borderline martial. Few other nations could attract foreign audiences with the spectacle of men marching in formation across a city square.
From factory floor to content farm
Since the 1990s the West has watched, both enthralled and appalled, as China built vast factories, mobilised hyper-efficient workforces and erected cities seemingly overnight. A parallel transformation is now unfolding in pop culture. If the Californian vision of the internet promised a boundless Eden of independent creators, tuanbo offers an alternative future: content as manufacturing. The livestream host becomes a worker in a colossal attention economy, governed by the same drive for efficiency that turned Chinese factories into the workshop of the world. The principles are ruthless: hyper-rationalism, scale, mass production. Western viewers are fixed to the screen like Victorian observers mesmerised by textile mills, glimpsing how quickly they too can become cogs.
Soft power without the slogan
These streams are not directed by the CCP, nor are they propaganda in any conventional sense. Yet they function as engines of Chinese soft power. Official diplomacy is tedious and suspect; new media forms slip into Western culture unnoticed. The hypnotic weirdness of tuanbo haunts Western feeds just as American AI-generated talking fruit or quasi-sexual ASMR does. The difference is that China's output emerges from a far less permissive environment, where censorship is pervasive and major tech firms are expected to align with state priorities.
Beyond degrading an already depleted pop culture landscape, tuanbo unsettles because it dismantles the internet's founding myth: an ocean of free creators operating without limits. In its place appears a homogenised bloc of producers and consumers who are, by definition, unsubversive. China's model of scaling and optimising video may eventually outcompete the Western model of individual creativity. The country that conquered industrial manufacturing could one day stamp culture "made in China" as well. That outcome would suit Xi Jinping's agenda perfectly.
One wonders whether, when the moment arrives that Xi's forces move on Taiwan, the generation that might have taken to the streets will instead be staring at their phones, watching a squadron of beauty-filtered men in stacked heels. When the bass gets bumpin' up in the club.