Kuaishou's 'sales only go up' feature got it fined ¥26.7M for faking data

Kuaishou, one of China's largest short-video and livestream platforms, built a massive e-commerce business through its subsidiary 快手小店 (Kuaishou Shop). By 2025 it was the country's second-largest livestream e-commerce platform behind Douyin, with hundreds of billions in annual GMV. But its rapid growth masked systemic compliance failures.

In December 2025, the State Administration for Market Regulation imposed a fine of ¥26.69 million on Kuaishou's e-commerce subsidiary for seven categories of violations. Among them was a feature that displayed sales data as 'only going up' — showing fabricated transaction volumes that never decreased, helping merchants and livestreamers inflate their performance metrics to deceive consumers.

Other violations included failure to properly display business licenses, charging unreasonable penalty fees to merchants, not removing unsafe or infringing products, lax advertising review for health and medical products, and facilitating illegal wildlife product sales. The regulator described the fine as part of a broader push to hold livestream platforms accountable for what happens on their services.