Zhou Yuan, an influencer, rose to prominence on social media platforms through videos featuring exaggerated eye contact and body movements, with catchphrases like "form your body in an X shape," sparking a wave of imitations.
She brands herself as a “sexual intelligence mentor” and has earned over 24 million yuan (HK$26.9 million) selling sexual intelligence courses to women.
The controversy surrounding her online courses is just the tip of the iceberg, and it is understood that business ventures have already extended to multiple fields. She is associated with eight companies, five of which are still in operation, with businesses covering health consultation, elderly care, medical aesthetics, medical device sales, and even the manufacture of adult sex toys.
Her courses are mainly divided into online and offline categories. Online courses range from 9.9 yuan to over a thousand yuan, with advanced and personalized courses customized by instructors, priced as high as 88,000 yuan.
For instance, the 999 yuan all-dimensional enhancement camp includes various emotional issues and sexual techniques; the official store page shows that up to six thousand people have already taken the course, showing the demand for such content in mainland.
The main in-person offering is a training camp with a two-day-two-night itinerary priced at 2999 yuan, which is only available to adult women. Instructors include psychological counselors and reproductive health counselors, and possess nationally certified professional qualifications.
Amid the backlash, several of Zhou’s social media accounts have been either suspended or set to private.
In March 2024, mainland media reported on a relationship training program with an operating model that was strikingly similar to that of Zhou Yuan’s. The host attracted viewers through live streams, using scripts and rhetoric such as "earning 50 million yuan after leaving ex-husband," exaggerating female “success” stories.
In class, the instructor would physically demonstrate "how to conquer men with the right sexual techniques" using explicit actions, and promote a feminine hygiene product priced at 598 yuan per box afterwards.
This "content-driven traffic generation, brainwashing and lecture selling approach had already been validated earlier by the emotional blogger "Ququ Female Power,”who taught women in her live streams how to acquire wealth from men to achieve upward social mobility.
She was fined by relevant departments in April 2025 for suspected tax evasion, with late payment fees and penalties totaling more than 7 million yuan.
