Why are China’s Most-followed Lifestyle Influencers Continuing to Disappear?

During China’s luxury boom of the late 2000s and early 2010s, new money announced itself in plain sight. The label was the message, the bigger and more recognisable the better, and a visible logo signalled that its owner had arrived. In Europe, established money had long moved in the opposite direction, treating discretion as the higher form of status. That preference for understatement has taken hold among China’s wealthiest consumers, and it is reshaping how luxury reaches them.

The shift became visible online in 2024. Several of China’s most-followed lifestyle influencers, whose content centred on displaying personal wealth, had their accounts closed across the major platforms. Wang Hongquanxing, who had built more than 4 million Douyin followers around his designer wardrobe, was among them. He openly claimed to own 7 luxury properties worth $110 million. So were Bo Gongzi, known for filming his sports cars and Hermès bags for 2.9 million followers, and Baoyu Jiajie, who showed 2.3 million people her lavish meals and homes. The removals followed a campaign by the Cyberspace Administration of China against accounts built on flaunting wealth to attract attention and traffic. The campaign also fits into Beijing’s broader “Common Prosperity” agenda, which has encouraged a more restrained public conversation around wealth and inequality in recent years. While luxury consumption itself remains accepted, the public celebration of excess has become less comfortable territory.