The encyclopedia · Marketing & Brand · Marketing decision · 2025
Hongrenhui ordered its own employees to fake its livestream's sales
In the 'Lao Gou (128)' stream, 17 products got fake orders — refunded or never paid. Staff kept it going for months. The fine: ¥400,000.
Tongliao Hongrenhui Media (通辽市荭人汇传媒有限公司) · 2026-01-30
What happened
Tongliao Hongrenhui Media runs livestream commerce in Inner Mongolia, selling through the room 'Lao Gou (128)' on a major platform. On August 23, 2025, seventeen of its products — beer, braising mixes, nuts among them — received orders designed to vanish: placed and then refunded, or placed and never paid at all. The point was not revenue but the displayed number: inflated transaction values broadcast to everyone watching.
The faking was not a one-night stunt. From July to November 2025 the company required its own employees to pad the numbers — placing orders they would not pay, or paying and returning the goods afterward. The fabricated transaction data was then used to advertise the products' sales performance, presenting invented demand as real.
In December 2025 the Tongliao Market Supervision Administration ordered the company to correct the conduct and fined it ¥400,000, citing the Interim Provisions on Anti-Unfair Competition on Networks and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. On January 30, 2026 SAMR included it in the fifth batch of national livestream-commerce enforcement examples — its exhibit on shuadan, order-faking — published for every platform and streamer to read.
Why it happened
- The number on screen is what sells the next advertising slot and the next viewer's trust — inflating it sells the stream, not the product.
- Employees were turned into fake buyers: orders never paid, orders paid and refunded — the sales figures ran on payroll.
- Fabricated transaction data misleads consumers about how well goods are actually selling, which regulators classify as false publicity.
The lesson
Fake sales may fool the next merchant, but not the regulator. Hongrenhui ran its employees through unpaid and refunded orders on seventeen products; SAMR fined ¥400,000 and published the method.
Aftermath
SAMR published the case on January 30, 2026 in its fifth batch of livestream-commerce enforcement examples, the same batch as the ¥26.69 million penalty on Kuaishou's e-commerce operator. The batch set out the pattern regulators now police by name: scripted drama, fake orders, and inflated data.
Sources
- Sina Finance / The Beijing News — Company fined ¥400,000 for making employees fake orders, 2026-01-30
- Guancha — SAMR publishes 4 livestream-commerce typical cases; Kuaigou fined over ¥26M (case 4: Hongrenhui), 2026-01-30
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