China's 'lipstick king' makes Time 100 Next 2021 list

Chinese livestreaming celebrity Li Jiaqi was included in the 2021 Time 100 Next list, an expansion of the Time 100 franchise.

Li was named in the Innovators category alongside 18 others, including compatriot Chloe Zhao, a Beijing-born movie director, John Jumper, the lead researcher for the AlphaFold artificial-intelligence program, and Rohan Pavuluri, the founder of Upsolve, a non-profit app that allows users to file for bankruptcy on their own.

The 29-year-old livestreamer, who is often dubbed as China's "lipstick king", started doing product reviews in 2016, eventually becoming one of the nation's most well-known online personalities.

In 2018, Li sold 15,000 lipsticks in just five minutes, and in 2019 he helped drive $145 million in sales on Taobao, the online marketplace owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba, during the Singles Day shopping gala.

Li had also cooperated with CCTV during the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 to boost the economy of Hubei, the hardest-hit province in China, by promoting its local products on his livestream.