The State Administration for Market Regulation official website reposts the article "The Takeout War Should End"

In the afternoon, Hong Kong stock technology-related shares saw a short-term surge. Meituan-W was up more than 12%, Alibaba-W up more than 6%, JD Group-SW up more than 5%, and Tencent Holdings narrowed its decline to 0.39%.

On the news front, the State Administration for Market Regulation forwarded an article from the Economic Daily titled “The Takeout Food War Should End.” The article said that the takeout food war affects not only restaurant owners’ ledgers, but also ordinary people’s livelihoods. When dining consumption—the “stabilizing ballast”—loses momentum due to a price war, the chill felt across the overall economy will ultimately filter down to every micro individual. Healthy competition should be a positive contest driven by technological innovation, efficiency improvements, and service optimization.

In the past few days, have you also received free-order vouchers from a takeout platform? At a recent press conference, the State Administration for Market Regulation disclosed the latest progress in its antitrust investigation into takeout platforms, saying that regulators have already moved into the relevant platforms to carry out on-site inspections, and that the next steps will further transmit regulatory pressure through methods such as questionnaires and document verification, while studying and developing handling measures. This sends a clear message to the market: the crazy takeout food war must be shut down!

The takeout food war seems to benefit people, but in reality it is all about internal competition that intensifies.

For consumers, the takeout food war really is “tempting.” Who doesn’t like a milk tea for 1 cent and coffee for 3 yuan? But what’s free is often the most expensive. When we shift our focus from the free-order vouchers in our phones to the entire macro economy, we find that the cost of this battle is ultimately being borne by ordinary people like us—and far beyond expectations.

The most direct impact shows up in macroeconomic data. From the end of Q2 to Q3 2025, the CPI that reflects China’s residents’ consumer prices kept falling, and the consumer market felt a chill. But oddly enough, if you strip out food and energy, core CPI has been rising instead. This indicates that consumption should have rebounded, but something “yanked” it down hard.

What’s “yanking” it is catering.

In China’s CPI statistical basket, the weight of food, tobacco and alcohol, plus food consumed away from home, is close to 30%, the highest among all categories. This means that when dining prices rise, CPI may jump as well; when dining prices fall, CPI may drop and “squat” as well.

With that context in mind, you’ll see that from the end of Q2 to Q3 2025, the growth rate of China’s catering revenue slowed down. The timing and trend of its decline closely overlap with the downward curve of overall CPI; meanwhile, in the same period, residential and transportation and communications—also with high weights—did not show a similar downturn.

And this time period is precisely when the takeout food war was at its hottest and when platform subsidies were at their most aggressive. Financial reports show that during the takeout food war, cumulative subsidies by Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan totaled between 80 billion yuan and 100 billion yuan. The China Hotels and Restaurants Association pointed out that price decreases caused by large-scale subsidy behavior among platforms became an important factor constraining the catering industry’s growth speed since June 2025. According to Meituan’s observations, this battle directly pushed the average price paid by customers dining in to levels from 10 years ago.

On the surface, the takeout food war is about platforms sharing costs with users, but from a macro perspective, it is a severe shock to the catering industry’s pricing system. To survive the subsidy war, catering companies are forced to sacrifice quality and compress profits. The whole industry falls into a vicious cycle of losing money but winning applause, which ultimately drags down the broader trend of consumption rebounding—this runs counter to the central government’s work部署 to boost consumption, adding unnecessary resistance to macroeconomic control.

The takeout food war affects not only restaurant owners’ ledgers, but also ordinary people’s livelihoods. Consumption is the main engine that drives economic growth. When catering consumption—“the stabilizing ballast”—loses momentum because of the vicious price war, the chill felt across the economy will ultimately be passed on to every micro individual. When corporate profits are as thin as paper and even losing money the moment the doors open, where will employment positions come from? And where can wage growth come from?

That is precisely why regulators moved in promptly to stop the takeout food war: it is, in fact, to maintain normal economic operations, avoid letting malicious competition disrupt the pace of economic recovery, and ensure that enterprises and workers can have normal lives and incomes.

Healthy competition should be a positive contest based on technological innovation, efficiency gains, and service optimization—not a money-burning game built on capital stacking, and certainly not a zero-sum game that uses a dominant position to control traffic and force users to pick sides. Let takeout prices return to a reasonable range; let the catering industry get out of the dilemma of “die without subsidies, chaos with subsidies”; and let market competition shift from competing by throwing money to competing by service. This is the true way to benefit businesses and people.

A price war can’t last forever; in “involution” competition, there are no winners. The takeout food war should end.

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责任编辑：凌辰