BEIJING — Fake paintings passed off as works by famous Chinese artists are being sold in bulk on livestream broadcasts in China, leaving a trail of elderly victims. Other livestream scams aimed at older people are also spreading, including hosts posing as museum directors who offer to buy collectibles at high prices and sellers exaggerating the benefits of health foods. Authorities are stepping up enforcement against individual sellers while tightening platform obligations, such as verifying the identities of broadcast hosts.
A 666-Yuan Painting Worth Tens of Millions? Fake Masterpieces Come With Forged Certificates
Paintings bearing the names of famous artists such as Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian and Xu Beihong are changing hands for tens to hundreds of yuan on livestreams on some Chinese short-form video platforms, Xinhua News Agency reported on the 7th. Sellers pushed viewers to buy with phrases such as “broadcast-only deal” and “clearing out inventory.” An official at the Henan Province Artists Association who examined paintings that reporters bought for 39 to 288 yuan (about 8,000 to 57,000 won) said the brushwork and the use of ink and pigment alone made the forgeries easy to spot.
A man in Luoyang, Henan Province, said last December that his father, who is in his 70s, had spent about 100,000 yuan (about 20 million won) buying fake antiques and paintings on livestreams. The father was receiving more than 100 parcels a month and still believed that a Qi Baishi painting he bought for 666 yuan was worth tens of millions of yuan. Another consumer in Guangdong Province spent about 10,000 yuan on four paintings and only later learned, while trying to dispose of them, that they were printouts with no collectible value.
To evade platform screening, sellers dropped or changed parts of the artists’ names, introducing Zhang Daqian as “Zhang Dawan,” for example. They stressed that the works were “100% handmade” and that “you can check the brush strokes with a magnifying glass,” yet never said whether the artist in question had painted them. Asked why the prices were so low, sellers said the works came with state subsidies or were early studies by the artist. The certificates were also unreliable. Four of the five works reporters bought came with certificates, but the issuing bodies either had no verifiable registration records or their seals belonged to organizations that authorities had previously placed on a watch list of suspected illegal social groups.
As losses snowball, police have made a string of arrests. Beijing’s Tongzhou police detained six people who sold fake paintings and calligraphy through livestreams, with confirmed fraud proceeds of 140,000 yuan, according to The Beijing News. The group hung fake plaques from museums and cultural institutions as broadcast backdrops and claimed to have secured exclusive supply channels. All the paintings they sold were copies or imitations, dressed up as originals through finishing work and framing, investigators found. As the controversy grew, Douyin, China’s largest video platform, shut down accounts and stores that had sold paintings and calligraphy under fake expert credentials and revoked their broadcasting and monetization privileges.
Posing as Adopted Sons and Promising Retirement Funds; Authorities Tighten Platform Liability
Organized scams that approach older people with offers to buy their collections at high prices and then squeeze them for various fees have also been uncovered. Wuhan police said on the 1st that they had detained 81 suspects in a fraud ring that lured older people onto livestreams with promises of free appraisals and high-price purchases, according to China Youth Daily. Victims numbered more than 1,000 nationwide, and the amount involved exceeded 10 million yuan.
Hosts posing as museum directors called themselves the older viewers’ adopted sons and promised to hand over retirement funds. After winning their trust, they induced transfers by saying that an in-person appraisal required 999 yuan upfront and that receiving the retirement funds required a 5,000-yuan deposit. Prize drawings for high-value items were rigged so that only shills won cash, while actual victims received cheap ceramics and jade.
Scams that prey on health anxieties are also on the rise. In a case disclosed by the State Administration for Market Regulation last October, operators gathered older people with an offer of “10 eggs for 1 yuan” and then funneled them into WeChat group chats and livestreams. One company in Anhui Province told older people it had recruited through health lectures that a particular product would preserve their youth and extend their lives. Employees posed as customers and posted reviews praising the results to drive orders.
Complaints and reports related to livestream commerce filed with the national consumer hotline 12315 totaled 402,000 in 2024, up 19.3% from a year earlier, according to the market regulator. With livestream fraud mounting, authorities have moved to respond. In mid-May last year, they launched a special crackdown on false promotion of medicines and health foods targeting older people, handling 4,516 violation cases through October of that year and imposing about 68.77 million yuan in fines and confiscations. The market regulator noted that some closed-door broadcasts destroy evidence by shutting down channels or disbanding group chats immediately after a broadcast ends, and pushed for enforcement covering platforms as well as sellers and manufacturers.
Rules on the supervision of livestream e-commerce also took effect on Feb. 1 this year. They require platforms to verify business information for broadcast operators and the identities of hosts, and to retain transaction information, including broadcast replays and records of conversations and payments, for at least three years after a transaction is completed. Those committing serious violations are placed on a blacklist, and switching accounts to evade sanctions is also blocked. The rules strengthen platform responsibility from verification at the point of sale through the preservation of evidence after harm occurs.
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