China’s Virtual Streamers Get a Reality Check
At 5:30 a.m., Monica sleepily switches off her alarm and staggers to the bathroom to wash her face. In her head, she’s already begun running through her script for the day. By the time she sits down in front of her computer and switches her camera on at 6, she’s ready to go. She waits a second for the camera to lock onto her face and launches her latest stream with a cheerful “Welcome to Meownica’s morning stream” in practiced Japanese.
On the other side of the camera, Monica’s viewers are greeted by a bright pink cattery — the home of Meownica, Monica’s cat-eared, anime-styled virtual alter ego. “How did everyone sleep?” Meownica asks in between greeting viewers as they trickle onto the stream. “I’m still so sleepy.”
Every now and again Monica glances at the clock, planning when to use her limited supply of platform-granted traffic boosts and red envelopes to net more new visitors, when to sing her first morning song, and when to start eating her breakfast on stream.
Finally, she pulls out a plate of toast and apples specially selected to create an enjoyable ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) effect. At around 7:30, she switches to a more upbeat song to better complement the virtual gifts streaming in from viewers. And as the stream starts to empty around 8 — her audience heading off to class or work — she bids them farewell individually, telling them in Japanese to stay safe on the road and come back for her evening show.
Monica finally logs off for the morning not long after, but her workday is just beginning. She quickly scans the weekly tasks assigned to her by the streaming platform Bilibili — a mix of YouTube and Twitch that is the beating heart of China’s anime, comics, and games (ACG) subculture. In addition to livestreaming for at least 20 hours, she must bring in 13,000 dianchi (the platform’s virtual currency); garner 2,000 live comments from fans; and register five new premium livestreaming members. Failure would mean missing out on the platform’s rewards for successful streamers, which sometimes amount to as little as 100 yuan ($14) in promotional money.
Monica is just one of several thousand virtual streamers — or VTubers — entertaining Bilibili users each day. Although a relative newcomer to the industry, having streamed for less than a year, she’s a traditionalist by the platform’s standards: a longtime ACG fan who grew up a fan of virtual streamers like Kizuna AI. Yet she’s struggled to build an audience, ironically, not because virtual idols are marginalized, but because of Bilibili’s efforts to promote the industry to a wider audience.
Monica joined the ranks of China’s virtual streamers not long after graduating college in 2024. At first she treated it as a side gig, but after struggling to find a full-time job, she left Shanghai and moved back to her hometown to save on living expenses. Now Monica livestreams twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, for a total of around eight hours on camera. The rest of her time is spent uploading live replays, creating videos for her personal site, and sourcing artists to design gifts for her premium viewers. For all that, she earns 4,000 to 6,000 yuan ($550 to $830) a month — enough to make ends meet in a small city.
The choice to adopt an anime skin rather than use her own face was a natural one, Monica says. From a young age, she used Bilibili to watch anime and manga and she grew up on ACG culture. In middle school, as the pressure on her to succeed mounted, she found comfort in watching livestreams of the virtual idol Kizuna AI, and saw the chance to recreate herself in two-dimensional form as a way to live out her childhood dreams.
She also wanted to avoid the highly competitive, often sexualized world of female livestreamers. “I could do it in terms of my looks, but it’s hard to live with that as an introvert,” Monica explained. “Plus, there are so many female livestreamers that you need a little soft-core porn just to get anywhere, but my self-respect won’t let me sell sex just to get male viewers.”
Bilibili began dabbling in the VTubing space in 2018, promoting a mix of Japanese and local VTubers, including Kizuno AI. At the time, there were so few streamers that, when coupled with Bilibili’s rigid adherence to the Japanese VTubing model, they were living the dream. Each could carve out their own niche, cultivating unique personas like anime princes or wolf maidens from outer space that resonated with various ACG subcultures.
Starting in 2020, the number of VTubers and viewers on Bilibili skyrocketed, and the following year saw China’s market size for VTubing reach 300 million yuan. This growth prompted the platform to introduce new policies in February 2022 in support of virtual livestreamers, a policy that also marked the first time China’s VTubers were called “Vups” (virtual uploaders).
That policy had two main components: attracting and supporting new Vups through preferential treatment like promotions and cash and finding ways to stimulate viewer spending on virtual streaming.
Vups were encouraged to mark celebrations like their one-month anniversaries, 100-day anniversaries, and new outfit reveals, as well as holidays like New Year, the Lunar New Year, and Valentine’s Day. In addition, the platform also began hosting biannual weeks-long singing competitions as a way for audiences to boost the popularity of their favorite Vups and send them “seasonal” gifts. Finally, it assigned various tasks: daily and weekly assignments like the ones Monica performs, as well as tasks pitting Vups against each other in competition and hourly rankings based on popularity and premium members.
The aim of this plan was to encourage livestreaming consumption and thereby popularize Vups — a byproduct of ACG culture — on Bilibili, similar to livestreaming on Douyin. Yet the actual results were mixed.
On the one hand, the industry continued to boom, with the number of Vups more than doubling from early 2022 to July 2024. But an imbalance developed between the number of Vups and viewers. Two surveys found that 70% of viewers were supporting between two and five Vups on average. But Bilibili’s main demographic is students aged 15 to 30 years old, a group with far less spending power than Bilibili’s leadership anticipated. Absent any major changes to age distribution or spending power, every Vup faced an income reduction.
Another key change was the decline of VTubers’ high status. In addition to fostering new Vups, Bilibili’s 2022 policy shifted resources from non-virtual content creators to Vups, thereby converting many regular streamers into VTubers. However, most of the newcomers were outsiders to Bilibili’s ACG bubble who couldn’t livestream as themselves for a host of reasons, like their looks, or else chafed against the livestreaming atmosphere on other platforms. In either case, they didn’t truly understand VTubing.
Given Bilibili’s lax management, the VTubing space quickly became overrun by business tactics common on other platforms like Douyin: online scams, sadfishing, soft-core porn, emotional manipulation, and everything in between. Many Vups also went offline to add premium members on messaging app WeChat, where they provided voice or even pornographic services.
Viewers’ attitudes have also shifted. In total, Bilibili registered 23,000 Vups between 2019 and 2024; just 8,000 remain active today, a disparity that reflects the viewers’ waning trust. They’ve seen their share of Vups who have left the scene within a few months’ time, overwhelmed by its competitiveness; those who have disappeared after making a fortune; and those whose offline fan scandals have led to a torrent of negative press for the industry. Cognizant that streamers have a short lifespan, audiences no longer have the same enthusiasm as they once did for Kizuna AI and the other original virtual idols. With the onslaught of bad money driving out good, Monica and other ACG insiders who truly yearn to become VTubers will either need to go with the flow, or else leave unhappy.
Translator: Katherine Tse; editor: Wu Haiyun.
(Header image: Screenshots from Bilibili virtual streamers. From Bilibili)
