Chinese streamer Li Jiaqi and TV show Paris Partners demonstrate the shifting trend of Chinese companies increasingly going overseas.
On the banks of the Seine, along the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Chinese aesthetics pop-up store Yan Lab quietly opened this summer. It brings a new angle to this boulevard, hailed as the world’s fashion temple. Yan Lab is not an ordinary retail space, but rather a real business experiment in Europe by the popular Chinese variety show Paris Partners.
The program brings together six partners, including renowned Chinese musician Shang Wenjie and famous e-commerce live streamer Li Jiaqi. Over 16 days, they started from scratch to set up this Chinese aesthetics store, which showcases 12 Chinese beauty and skincare brands.
Paris Partners is not just a demonstration of business activity but represents a significant cultural shift. It goes beyond a commercial venture and demonstrates a shifting global narrative of Chinese brands, showing how they are increasingly going out to Europe and the West.
Echoes of History: From Bringing In to Going overseas
Over thirty years ago, China’s reform and opening up allowed European beauty giants such as France’s L’Oréal Group to enter the country. For these brands, it was an act of commercial expansion. However, for China it offered a profound shift in the industry. Foreign companies brought advanced brand concepts, mature marketing systems, rigorous product standards, and international perspectives. What was learnt in this period laid the foundation for the rise of Chinese domestic brands in the years to come.
After a long period of catching up, Chinese beauty brands have now achieved a qualitative leap from manufacturing to creating. This transformation has been driven by both China’s industry might and cultural strengths.
On the industry level, China’s flexible supply chain and economic strengths have allowed domestic brands to rapidly catch up with international standards in research, development, and ingredients.
Culturally, Chinese brands have broken away from early-stage imitation and turned inward to a growing pride in Chinese culture. Whether it is Florasis integrating intangible cultural heritage craftsmanship into product design, or Herborist conveying the Eastern philosophy of balance, both have contributed to shaping a distinctive C-Beauty aesthetic style. This has allowed brands to successfully forge strong emotional connections with a new generation of consumers in China, and now further afield.
This comprehensive shift is slowly reshaping the global perception of Made in China. The long-standing label of the world’s factory is being replaced with a new image integrating cultural heritage and advanced development.
Li Jiaqi’s personal career is a perfect example of this shift. He started working as a beauty consultant at a L’Oréal counter in China, learning during the era of bringing in. Next, he moved into live-streaming and ecommerce, where he became known as ‘lipstick king’ for his sales of cosmetics during streams. Now, as the Product Director of Paris Partners, he promotes Chinese domestic brands on the streets of Paris. This shift in identity is not only his personal success but also symbolises the historic leap of China’s beauty industry in international discourse. From bringing in to going overseas.
Li Jiaqi’s Business Empowerment and Model Innovation
This transformation from learner to exporter is demonstrated by Li Jiaqi through Paris Partners. He leverages his professional skills and forward-looking business model to provide concrete solutions for Chinese brands going global.
His years of sales experience allow him to communicate with professionalism. In the show, when facing French customers with different makeup requirements, he was always able to offer precise, personalised advice. For example, he suggested using blush instead of highlighter to enhance the three-dimensional effect for an Asian customer and even gave a live demonstration of the “sweeping” technique. The immediate visual effect quickly won customers’ trust. This kind of professional skill that transcends language barriers successfully promoted the products. More importantly, his professionalism as a salesperson instantly infused unfamiliar Chinese brands with the image value of professionalism.
He contributed to the Paris Partner stores’ business model innovation. Li Jiaqi creatively translated China’s already mature online livestream sales model into an offline, physical store in Paris. He created a beauty classroom in store that combined display, education, and entertainment. This took the efficient, lively, and highly interactive presentation style of livestreaming into the daily operations of the pop-up store. This model, empowering offline experiences with online traffic thinking, helped solve the common problem of being overlooked faced by new brands entering unfamiliar markets.
Finally, he exemplified attention to detail from efficiently sorting and organising products during transport to meticulously preparing items like double-sided tape and gloves on checklists. Li Jiaqi demonstrated the new generation of Chinese business practitioners’ relentless pursuit of process and detail. This professional rigour proves to the world that today’s Chinese brands not only carry cultural stories, but also deliver the refined quality to match them.
New Cultural Soft Power Shaped by Beauty
Li Jiaqi’s professional skills served as the engine driving the successful operation of the pop-up store. However, the true value of this endeavour lies in exploring the use of commerce as a vehicle for cultural exchange. Taking place at the historical juncture of the 50th anniversary of China-European Union diplomatic ties, this event carries an even deeper significance.
It successfully went beyond selling products to telling stories. The core appeal of Paris Partners and the YAN LAB pop-up lies in treating beauty products as cultural vessels. When Li Jiaqi introduces a lipstick engraved with Eastern motifs to French customers, he is conveying not only its shade and texture but also the intangible heritage behind it. This culture-driven communication, grounded in professional expertise, elevates commercial activity into a vivid cultural exchange. It goes beyond promoting products to promoting culture.
It also establishes a dialogue space for mutual understanding. Effective cultural exchange is far from one-way indoctrination. The show not only showcases Chinese beauty to French audiences but also allows the Chinese team to gain first-hand insight into the real demands and aesthetic preferences of the international market. This process of learning through interaction and adjusting based on feedback provides invaluable practical experience for the global strategies of domestic brands. It is far more tangible than any market report. The extensive attention and coverage from European media further confirm that this commercial activity has successfully transcended its original scope, acquiring noteworthy journalistic value and cultural significance.
Li Jiaqi and Paris Partners’ demonstration in France carries significance far beyond commerce. It serves as a microcosm, demonstrating the transformation of China’s beauty industry from learner to creator, and creates a bridge connecting Eastern and Western aesthetic perceptions through professionalism and sincerity. It is also a signal, announcing against the 50th anniversary of China-European Union diplomatic ties, that Chinese brands are participating in and reshaping the narrative of globalisation with greater confidence.
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