Li Yapeng, the former television star turned livestreamer, has staged a striking commercial comeback: recent sessions on Douyin have drawn millions of viewers and pushed single-show sales into the hundreds of millions of yuan. A February 7th special drew about 16.96 million views and more than 39 million likes, and three recent broadcasts topped RMB 100 million each, helping his follower count climb from roughly 6 million to more than 11 million in weeks.
The surge followed a 31-minute video Li posted in mid-January that publicly set out the precarious finances of the Yanran Angel Children’s Hospital, a charity-linked clinic he co-founded after his daughter was born with a cleft lip. The disclosure triggered rapid online sympathy: within days the charity saw millions of yuan in donations, and Li pivoted to a spate of livestreams that combined sales pitches with appeals on behalf of the hospital and public defenses of other donors.
But the commercial gloss is accompanied by concrete legal and fiscal problems. Public filings show Lijiang Xueshan Investment — a company in which Li holds shares — has a new tax-delinquency notice for more than RMB 6.34 million in unpaid urban land-use tax. Separately, a 2025 court ruling ordered the hospital to vacate premises and pay roughly RMB 6 million in back rent and related fees, with Li held jointly liable for about RMB 270,000 of those arrears.
Those liabilities expose a common fault line in celebrity-driven philanthropy in China: large public donations are not a panacea when institutions lack the regulatory status or business model to absorb operating shortfalls. Yanran Hospital, established in 2012 and born out of the Yanran Angel Fund that Li and singer Faye Wong set up, has a long record of free surgeries but a thin clinical portfolio, a steep fall in outpatient volume, and rapidly rising rents that have outpaced its income.
The episode highlights two broader trends. First, livestreaming has become a fast route to commercial redemption for public figures in China, where platform mechanics can rapidly monetize visibility. Second, the case underlines persistent weaknesses in governance among celebrity-backed ventures: charitable credibility and social capital do not substitute for sustainable revenue models, competent management or compliance with fundraising and tax rules.
Looking ahead, Li’s short-term commercial momentum may not insulate him from longer-term scrutiny. Regulators and courts have already featured in the story — both via the rent judgment and the inability to channel some donations into immediate operational rescue because of fundraising-qualification rules — and those institutional constraints are likely to shape any realistic plan for the hospital’s survival. For international observers, the episode is a compact illustration of how China’s digital economy, philanthropy rules and property-cost pressures intersect to create opportunities and risks for celebrity entrepreneurs.