Recently, Zhong Shanshan, the founder of Nongfu Spring, took aim at e-commerce platforms during an appearance on CCTV Finance's "Dialogue" program. He referred to them as "undeniable intermediaries" and urged that "platform power must be curbed." His comments have ignited a strong response within the industry, with arguments that have both practical merit and perspective limitations, while also aligning with the national trend of regularizing platform regulation.

Zhong Shanshan's criticism of e-commerce platforms is not merely emotional outbursts but stems from a deep understanding based on the perspectives of the physical manufacturing industry and traditional commerce. His main arguments are centered around the following three points:

① Algorithm Black Box and Pricing Power Deprivation: Zhong Shanshan contends that while traditional trading platforms have transparent and fixed fee structures, e-commerce platforms utilize algorithms to dynamically set prices, take commissions, and control traffic for each transaction. This leaves merchants unable to accurately calculate their actual earnings before completing a sale, with platforms effectively wielding absolute control over pricing and traffic allocation.

② Suppression of Offline Emotional Consumption: He points out that e-commerce platforms, as pervasive intermediaries, have not only "wiped out" a significant number of traditional retailers in urban areas but have also confined young consumers' behavior to mobile screens. This shift suppresses spontaneous, emotional consumption from window-shopping, potentially undermining societal creativity.

③ Warning Against Destructive Price Competition: Zhong Shanshan emphasizes that e-commerce platforms currently incentivize low prices unilaterally, driving firms into a vicious cycle of "competing on price, not quality." He believes such price wars, which come at the expense of product quality and innovation, represent the most damaging form of destruction to social productivity.

In fact, this is not Zhong Shanshan's first public critique of e-commerce platforms. As early as November 2024, during an event in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, he criticized a certain e-commerce platform's pricing system as "a tremendous harm to Chinese brands and industries" and stated that he would "never engage in live-stream commerce." Now, his call to curb platform power is a direct appeal to regulators, expressed with increasingly strong language.

In my opinion, his arguments hold some validity, touching upon the real chaos in today's platform economy for three main reasons:

1. Accurately Identifying Platform Self-Regulation Failures

During the early stages of platform development, issues such as forced exclusivity, mandatory lowest prices, arbitrary increases in promotion fees, and algorithmic covert suppression of merchants were widespread, leaving merchants in a perpetually vulnerable position. Zhong Shanshan's remarks reflect the shared concerns of millions of small and medium-sized merchants and physical enterprises.

2. Balancing the Digital Economy and Manufacturing from the Perspective of the Real Economy

There has long been a tendency in China to prioritize the online sector over the physical sector, with platforms quickly reaping profits through traffic while manufacturing firms struggle with thin margins or even losses. His voice calls for policies that consider the development of physical industries and prevent excessive concentration of capital and traffic online.

3. Highly Aligned with National Regulatory Direction, with Practical Policy Resonance

In recent years, China has introduced a series of frequently revised regulations, such as the Anti-Monopoly Law, the Provisional Rules on Online Anti-Unfair Competition, and draft amendments to the E-Commerce Law, aiming to return pricing power to merchants and restrict platforms from abusing market dominance through data and algorithms. The platform economy is transitioning from a traffic-driven era to a responsibility-driven era. Zhong Shanshan's views resonate with top-level regulatory thinking.

However, to be frank, Zhong Shanshan's characterization of e-commerce platforms as "intermediaries" also has significant limitations, namely the inability to entirely deny the value of e-commerce platforms. Specifically:

① Platforms Are Not Traditional Price-Differential Intermediaries: Financially and commercially, e-commerce platforms derive core revenue from transaction commissions, marketing ads, and technology value-added services, not from purchasing-selling price differentials. Platforms do not engage in procurement or inventory stocking and bear no risk of unsold goods, fundamentally differing from traditional intermediaries who buy low and sell high.

② Value of Digital Infrastructure: E-commerce platforms have broken down geographical and temporal barriers, restructuring the commodity circulation system across society. To support massive transactions, platforms invest heavily in technologies like cloud computing, smart logistics, and online payments, offering diversified services unattainable by traditional intermediaries.

③ Biased Stance Due to Business Model: Zhong Shanshan's remarks reflect a clear stance from physical enterprises. Nongfu Spring relies on heavy assets (water sources, factories) and offline channels to build barriers, naturally rejecting the low-price and traffic-oriented e-commerce model. Thus, his call to curb platform power partly aims to protect profits from traditional channels and does not fully represent an objective industry perspective.

Overall, Zhong Shanshan's latest remarks represent a concentrated voice from the physical industry against unchecked platform expansion and unrestrained power. They accurately expose industry pain points such as traffic monopolies, opaque fees, and the squeezing of physical sectors, reinforcing the necessity of continued national regulation of the platform economy. However, we must view this dialectically:

E-commerce platforms remain an indispensable part of the modern circulation system and cannot be entirely denied in social value. The industry's optimal solution is not to suppress platforms but to constrain their abuse of market power through improved laws, regulations, and regularized oversight, achieving a win-win for digital platforms, physical manufacturing, offline commerce, and consumers.

In other words, the future ideal state of commerce is not dominance by any single channel but finding a balance between protecting digital economic innovation vitality and preventing excessive channel power expansion, enabling coexistence and balanced development of online platforms and offline physical sectors with diverse formats. With regulatory intervention, driving platforms to return to their service-oriented essence will be key to the healthy development of the future commercial ecosystem. What do you think?