East Buy,Secret Tutoring (2018) the e-commerce subsidiary of Chinese private education giant New Oriental, recently experienced a three-day suspension of its retail store and live streaming activities on the short video platform Douyin. The suspension, which occurred on July 26, was confirmed as “required by the rules,” according to a statement from East Buy posted on its Twitter-like Weibo account. Specific reasons for the suspension were not disclosed by either party. The temporary hiatus, described by East Buy’s CEO as “quite sudden” and “purely accidental,” came shortly after the brand had successfully utilized the TikTok sister app to achieve transformational success since last June. Moreover, East Buy had recently introduced live commerce on its own app earlier this month. According to a source close to Douyin, the platform’s decision to temporarily close East Buy’s activities was prompted by suspicions that the company was diverting traffic from Douyin to their independent app. [CLS, in Chinese]
