Subsidy scale is three times the industry's profit; experts collectively discuss: the takeout war already shows signs of giant dumping behavior.

Ask AI · Experts: How to evaluate the dumping characteristics of the takeout war?

The takeout war has lasted over a year, and the damage to the upstream and downstream of the catering industry chain is gradually becoming apparent.

On April 2nd, “The Beijing News Review” discussed the topic of involutionary competition in the takeout field, engaging experts from the legal and economic circles. The focus was on whether the takeout war is merely common internet subsidies or has evolved into “predatory pricing,” even constituting quasi-dumping competition behavior.

According to publicly available financial reports and industry estimates, during the takeout war, Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan’s total subsidies are estimated to have reached 80 billion to 100 billion yuan, while the entire year’s profit in the takeout industry was only around 30 billion yuan.

This subsidy scale, exceeding the industry’s capacity, has triggered questions about the nature of the competitive behavior.

Yang Dong, President of the Beijing Digital Economy and Digital Governance Legal Research Association and Dean of the Law School at Renmin University of China, stated that large subsidies from takeout platforms “cannot be simply categorized as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ judgment.” Platforms leveraging strong capital to conduct long-term cross-subsidies and selling at prices below cost indeed carry the risk of evolving into predatory pricing.

“Cross-subsidies” are a significant source of funding for this takeout war and one of the reasons for the continuous expansion of subsidy scale. For example, some e-commerce platforms rely on profits accumulated from online shopping, finance, cloud services, and other fields to continuously cross-subsidize their takeout business. Yang Dong further explained that if the core purpose of the platform is to squeeze out competitors and, after increasing market share, to harvest initial investments by raising commissions or prices, this exceeds normal promotional scope and constitutes a substantial harm to the competitive mechanism.

Moreover, from an economic perspective, some believe that the takeout war shares certain similarities with “predatory dumping” in international trade.

In response, Liu Cheng, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Finance and Strategic Studies, analyzed that the domestic takeout market exhibits certain characteristics of “dumping” in competitive behavior. Besides using low prices as a competitive tactic, another obvious feature is the “intent to squeeze out competitors or even clear the market, for example, prioritizing market share as the main goal.” This kind of competition objectively continues to convert dine-in shares, originally part of offline physical economy, into online platform transaction volume, which warrants attention.

How to distinguish between dumping in the takeout industry and traditional dumping behavior? Liu Cheng believes that the “low prices” of takeout platforms are multi-sided: platforms subsidize consumers, but the pressure often transmits down to merchants, delivery personnel, and even suppliers. “This behavior of shifting cost pressures along the industrial chain effectively redistributes profits across the entire industry chain, which may not cause victims to emerge all at once but in stages.”

It is worth noting that this price war occurs between platforms with different core businesses and vastly different scales. The contest is about capital endurance rather than operational efficiency, and the costs are borne collectively by the catering industry chain upstream and downstream.

A survey report released by Lixin Consulting in March 2026 shows that since the start of the takeout war, 80% of catering merchants experienced a decline in net profit, with 35% seeing a drop of more than 30%. To cope with profit compression, 39% of catering merchants in 2025 began switching to lower-cost raw material suppliers, 30% strengthened bargaining with suppliers, and 20% increased the proportion of low-cost dishes.

If the takeout war continues, it will inevitably cause further impacts on the real economy.

The Hongcan Industry Research Institute’s March 2026 report predicts that if the price war continues until 2028, the proportion of low-price orders will approach 60%. The per capita catering consumption nationwide will drop from 32.88 yuan in 2025 to 27.8 yuan, and the net profit per order for small and medium-sized restaurants will be less than 0.6 yuan. The proportion of merchants switching to low-cost raw materials may rise from the current 39% to nearly 60%.

Currently, the catering industry’s attitude toward calling for a “ceasefire” in the takeout war is becoming increasingly clear. On March 25th, 11 industry associations in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, including the Guangdong Chain Operation Association, jointly issued a proposal to resist involutionary low-price dumping in the “takeout war,” calling for the industry to abandon vicious price competition and return to a healthy development track. The Lixin Consulting report also shows that 84% of frontline merchants are calling for an end to low-price involution and a return to rational competition.

Since the beginning of this year, regulators have repeatedly signaled to stop the “takeout war,” demanding that platform economies return to healthy development. On March 25th, the official website of the State Administration for Market Regulation reprinted the commentary article “The Takeout War Should End” from the Economic Daily. On January 9th, the Office of the Anti-Monopoly and Anti-Unfair Competition Committee of the State Council launched an investigation into the takeout platform service industry, characterizing relevant behaviors as “highlighting issues such as拼补贴,拼价格, controlling流量, etc., squeezing the real economy.”

From intensive regulatory actions to public statements by industry associations and concentrated academic discussions on “predatory dumping” — the damage caused by this price war to the industry chain has reached a level that society must confront directly.