Recently, NONGFU SPRING founder and chairman Zhong Shanshan appeared on a CCTV program "Dialogue". During the show, discussing the widespread e-commerce platforms in daily life, Zhong stated that platforms are a special type of intermediary. "This intermediary is everywhere, it has 'killed' many retailers in the city," he said. He argued that many urban stores rely on emotional consumption, but this type of consumption has been stifled. "Young people are drawn to their phone screens. Where is the creativity and emotion?" Consequently, he called for limiting the power of these platforms.
On August 10, media figure Wu Xiaobo published a rebuttal to Zhong's comments. Wu said that Zhong's statements mixed many viewpoints together, making it difficult to offer a generalized rebuttal. He bluntly noted that Zhong had seen the disease but prescribed the wrong medicine. Wu explicitly stated that he disagreed with Zhong's core views on three main points.
First, Wu argued that Zhong had pitted e-commerce against other business forms in a hostile, opposing manner. This neither aligns with basic facts nor helps change the current situation; even discussing it for another twenty years would be futile. Especially in today's climate of unprecedented low domestic demand, treating e-commerce as the "imaginary enemy" of offline retail only generates ineffective venting and negative emotions, fostering "hatred" among different business models.
Second, Wu stated that Zhong's opposition of e-commerce to the real economy was even more absurd and disregards facts. Over the past thirty years, most technological iterations and model innovations in China's manufacturing, logistics, finance, and even public governance have been closely linked to and driven by the progress of internet platform companies. In the era of artificial intelligence, this correlation and synergy will become even more pronounced.
Third, Wu contended that Zhong entirely categorizes consumer spending as "material consumption," leading to a zero-sum game perspective between e-commerce prosperity and urban economic vitality. Contrary to this, the ongoing reality is that China's Engel coefficient is continuously declining, and people's enthusiasm for cultural needs is steadily rising. Therefore, future consumer spending should be unleashed in the incremental markets of cultural entertainment, health, and wellness, rather than fighting over and redistributing shares within the existing pie of material consumption.
Additionally, Wu pointed out that he strongly agrees with Zhong's accusations regarding the "black-box" rules of super-platforms and their squeezing of supply chain profits, acknowledging that it is an issue that must be addressed. However, Wu noted that Zhong did not offer constructive suggestions for improvement. Wu believes that after "the dragon-slaying youth has become the dragon itself," trying to persuade or cajole them back to their former selves is an impossible task. The only possibility lies in revolutionary technological innovation, calling for the birth of a new "dragon-slaying youth." In the AI era, this is precisely one of the most anticipated developments.
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