Four days ago, when faced with the "choose one" rumor, Yu Minhong replied to Sina Technology and denied it, saying "it's okay, it's not that serious." As he said, he didn't "choose one or the other." Instead, he first dismissed Sun Dongxu from his post, and then said, "Let him stay in Dongfang Selection and continue to contribute." He also made a big enough "pie" for Dong Yuhui: "I will definitely have the right to speak in the future" and "I am planning to take Dong Yuhui to live broadcast abroad."


Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui's joint live broadcast seems to have temporarily pressed the stop button on the "little composition" incident of Oriental Screening. During this turmoil, the outside world glimpsed many undercurrents within Dongfang Selection.

The insincere Yu Minhong, the management who wanted to "remove Dong Yuhui", and Dongfang Selection who were eventually "removed from Dong Hua" were all topics that could not be avoided in the turmoil.

Reject the rice circle culture? In fact, he is the beneficiary

Early this morning, Oriental Selection just released a live broadcast preview, and Dong Yuhui’s identity became “Senior Partner of Oriental Selection”.

Throughout the entire turmoil, Dong Yuhui, Sun Dongxu, and Yu Minhong all emphasized their rejection of the rice circle culture. But the undeniable fact is that the rapid rise of Oriental Selection is inseparable from Dong Yuhui's "mother-in-law" fans. To a certain extent, Oriental Selection was initially the beneficiary of the so-called rice circle culture.

In 2021, Yu Minhong has already personally carried out live broadcasts to bring agricultural products, but he did not win much traffic. It wasn't until Dong Yuhui's popularity in the second year that Oriental Screening finally climbed out of the trough of "double reduction". It can be said that Dong Yuhui is like a huge lottery ticket won by Oriental Selection.

In June 2022, Dong Yuhui quoted classics and expounded the rules in the live broadcast room, switching fluently between Chinese and English, making the Oriental Selection live broadcast room become popular overnight, with an increase of nearly 20 million followers in a month. The stock price of New Oriental Online (Oriental Selection was renamed from New Oriental Online) has also been soaring, with an annual increase of nearly 900% in 2022.

Dong Yuhui has also gone from an ordinary English teacher to an absolute top-notch player. The number of fans on his Douyin personal account has exceeded 10 million. Many netizens are rushing him to place orders in the live broadcast room. Even Yu Minhong has publicly thanked Dong Yuhui, saying, "Without him, Oriental Selection might not have sold so well."

According to financial report data, in fiscal year 2023 (June 2022-May 2023), Oriental Selection’s net revenue increased by 651% year-on-year to 4.5 billion yuan, of which revenue from self-operated products and live broadcast e-commerce business was 3.9 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 90%, and the GMV of goods for the whole year reached 10 billion yuan. At the same time, Oriental Selection turned a loss into a profit, achieving a net profit of 970 million yuan, compared with a net loss of 71 million yuan in the last fiscal year. Not long ago, Oriental Selection issued an announcement that it decided to divest its education business and become a specialized operator of self-operated products and live broadcast services.

In fact, live streaming is nothing new. Fans of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya have engaged in similar behavior, and fans of both parties have even started wars with each other on social platforms. The core appeal of Dong Yuhui's "mother-in-law" has always been to hope that Dongfang Selection will take Dong Yuhui seriously and give him the treatment and protection he deserves.

Previously, Oriental Selection has always tried its best to maintain its relationship with fans. On the one hand, Oriental Selection helps Dong Yuhui create the "best son-in-law" or even the "best boyfriend" personality through content planning and other means to meet the needs of Dong Yuhui fans for their intimate emotions. In addition, Oriental Selection has also been extremely patient in dealing with the various objections from the "mother-in-law" and mostly used appeasement strategies.

For example, in September this year, Dong Yuhui’s live video was distributed through slices, which aroused strong dissatisfaction and doubts among fans. For this reason, Sun Dongxu quickly responded in the live broadcast room, and Yu Minhong also personally issued a video apology, pointing out that the company's management was unprofessional. At this point, the fans' anger was suppressed.

Management and the hidden efforts to “remove Donghua”

However, things must go to extremes, and "Dong Yuhui's dependence syndrome" has become increasingly prominent within Oriental Selection, becoming a problem that management has to pay attention to.

Some organizations found through statistics that Dong Yuhui’s ability to carry goods fluctuated significantly in the sessions where Dong Yuhui was vacant during the Oriental Selection live broadcast. Haitong Securities data shows that in March this year, the average number of daily viewers of Dong Yuhui's live broadcast was 9.5 million, a gain of 31.6%, and the average GMV was 17.45 million, a gain of 35.8%, which was significantly higher than Dong Yuhui's single-game GMV and number of viewers when he did not live broadcast.

In fact, Dong Yuhui’s strong personal IP value is no different than that of New Oriental’s famous teachers back then. According to New Oriental's management style in the past, for famous teachers, New Oriental provided salaries that were higher than the industry level, but at the same time it was also cautious and even maintained an attitude of prevention and suppression.

A New Oriental teacher who has resigned said that since they are already famous teachers, salary is naturally not the most important factor. New Oriental is essentially a place that values ​​managers more than famous teachers. The arrogance of power and the hidden force of "de-famous teachers" have largely led to the departure of famous teachers.

Luo Yonghao also spoke out and directly pointed out the conflict between Oriental Selection management and Dong Yuhui. Luo Yonghao said that Oriental Selection may be the most unfair, ridiculous, and the most bullying and squeezing of young people I have ever seen since the birth of live streaming e-commerce in China, and it is unique to a certain extent.

He forwarded Weibo: "If the 'editor' is really an editor, a CEO who is slightly sane, after he knows this, the comment content must be deleted within 5 minutes, and the writing team must be fired immediately." And the comment said, "Including a slightly sane chairman."

However, the environment of Oriental Selection has changed now. In the era of live streaming and selling products, Internet celebrity anchors are different from the famous teachers in the New Oriental era. If the management blindly wants to strengthen control and ignore the feelings of fans, then Oriental Selection is likely to eventually be counterattacked by the "de-Dong Yuhui".

The aforementioned resigned New Oriental teacher said, "The so-called famous teachers, in the eyes of a certain group of executives, are just actors who can be thrown away at any time. It was only with the power of e-commerce media that Dong Yuhui's talent and influence were large enough to break the barriers of managers. This was something that none of us teachers could do at the time."

How does Dong Yuhui eat the cakes painted by Yu Minhong?

"Please rest assured that you will not be treated badly. That is not my first pursuit." Dong Yuhui revealed on the live broadcast that Yu Minhong discussed the salary issue with him that day. Yu Minhong also said that after taking charge of Oriental Selection as CEO, he will soon launch a round of major adjustments, including the treatment of all anchors, "not only for Dong Yuhui, but for all anchors in the company."

For Oriental Selection after encountering such a big turmoil, how to deal with the relationship with the top anchors and how to redistribute interests internally will be a key proposition that affects the company's future stable development. As early as May last year, Yu Minhong also reflected that the management and incentives for New Oriental's famous teachers were not in place, and he "did not turn them from employment to partnership with himself."

Among the current super anchors, Simba and Xiao Yang are their own bosses. Under an operating model similar to that of a family business, they continue to drive and incubate new anchors through their own traffic. The relationship between Oriental Selection and the anchors is more biased towards Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi.

However, as senior "Internet celebrity workers", the cooperation between Li Jiaqi and Mei ONE, Li Ziqi and Hangzhou Weinian also produced different plots. For Dongfang Selection, the former may be a more ideal model. It relied on high profit sharing in the early stage and stock split in the later stage, and it all went peacefully; the latter went to court and became a warning for the industry.

Although Li Jiaqi does not directly hold shares in Mei ONE in terms of ownership structure, starting in 2017, Li Jiaqi and Mei ONE founder Qi Zhenbo jointly established a number of companies. Li Jiaqi also stated his identity as "Mei ONE Partner" in his Weibo profile. Tianyancha data shows that Li Jiaqi currently has 19 companies, of which he serves as legal person in 6 companies.

Dong Yuhui considers himself a scholar, but fame and fortune may indeed not be his top priority. Yu Minhong said in the live broadcast that Dong Yuhui followed him because of three wishes: "First, we are willing to lead everyone to see the world together; second, we are willing to spread culture together; third, we are willing to do agriculture together."

So, how does Dong Yuhui eat the "cake" painted by Yu Minhong? The outside world's attention is also focused on the issue of "whether Dong Yuhui will leave Oriental Selection". Yu Minhong said in the live broadcast, "Dong Yuhui never said he would leave Eastern Selection." Dong Yuhui said, "If you are not happy with your job in the future, you can leave at any time. Teacher Yu said that he will help me."

At present, it has become an industry consensus for MCN organizations to reduce their reliance on top anchors. This year, as the broadcast support team matures, Li Jiaqi himself has also reduced the number of live broadcasts. The "de-Luohua" process of making friends is almost completed. "Now whether I broadcast or not broadcast, the impact on the company's income is only a few percentage points." Luo Yonghao said.

Financial report data shows that as of the end of May this year, Oriental Selection’s overall self-operated products and live broadcast team exceeded 1,100 people. As for the current Dongfang Selection, instead of rushing to "de-Dong Yuhui", it is better to think about how to support the second-tier star anchors such as Yoyo and Dundun so that all eggs will not be put in the same basket.

Text | Sina Technology Xu Yuanlei