THE TELEGRAPH
In the end, one hundred skewers of spicy Guizhou chicken proved to be too much.
Alongside lashings of potato, dumplings and noodles, food vlogger Mires munched her way through the kebabs in a small local restaurant in the southern Chinese province.
In the video from May, the young woman leaves trails of sauce across her mouth as she slides dozens of meat-laden sticks between her teeth.
Visibly slowing after several hours, she eventually gives up. She then informs a waiter that the rest of the food, including a half-eaten bowl of rice, will have to be taken away.
“I am really full, I don’t think my stomach has endless space,” she sighs.
While displays of greediness like this have earned Mires an avid following of 300,000 YouTube subscribers, they appear to have irked the Chinese government.
On Friday, Beijing announced a fresh crackdown on influencers and live-streamers, issuing 31 guidelines for their behaviour that included a warning against “food waste”.
The regulation by the Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation also targeted “traffic-driven videos”, “money worship”, “fandom culture”, and “abnormal aesthetics”, a reference to China’s ongoing efforts to restrain “effeminate” culture among men.
It is not yet clear what impact the regulations will have on thousands of so-called “Mukbangs” – live-streamers who gobble large quantities of food to the appreciation of an online audience.
As of Sunday, Mukbang videos can still be found on popular Chinese social media platforms including Douyin and Weibo.
However, the Chinese Communist Party’s decision to clamp down on the country’s 15.8 million professional live-streamers and influencers is tied to an ongoing economic slowdown.
Ostentatious displays of wealth have already been banned including the account of Wang Hongquanxing – “China’s Kim Kardashian” who boasted of never leaving the house in less than $1.4million in jewellery which was blocked in May.
Xi Jinping, China’s president, has tightened government control over perceived cultural “excesses” at a time of slow growth, high youth unemployment and a troubled property market.
