Anti-involution, the country fired the first shot!
At the most important meeting of the year, the Politburo, which focuses on "economic research", there is a major signal that every industry that is becoming more competitive will be transformed.
A key word that had not appeared in the past, "anti-involution", was written into the press release of the conference.
The original text is:
It is necessary to strengthen the self-discipline of the industry and prevent the vicious competition of "involution". Strengthen the mechanism of survival of the fittest in the market, and smooth the exit channels of backward and inefficient production capacity.
You must know that when the economy is in a downturn and production capacity is abundant, the involution will become more and more serious.
The conference characterized "involution" as vicious competition, which obviously has symbolic significance, and a series of big moves will follow. New energy vehicles, e-commerce, education and other "involution" hard-hit areas will usher in a huge earthquake in the industry.
In today's China, the involution is too powerful, everyone is too tired to live, and they can't make money, and everyone is in deep confusion:
Why is China's new energy vehicles, which are recognized as the world's leading ones, but they are all over the country, and car companies can only survive with large layoffs?
Why is it that China's GDP is already the second largest in the world, but the working hours of workers are getting longer and longer, with an average of 49 hours per week, the most tiring in the world?
Why has the era finally changed from encouraging competition and horse racing to a distinct "anti-involution", and the wind direction has changed greatly?
Breaking the inertia of the economic downturn and cooperating with the policy "throttle", this top-down "anti-involution" movement is likely to be a turning point.
The huge ripple effect began.
Have you ever heard of the "theater effect"?
A group of people were watching the play in the theater, and at first everyone was sitting, but suddenly someone stood up and blocked the view. In order to be able to see the stage clearly, gradually, everyone was forced to stand up.
This is involution.
Everyone was standing with a sore back, a terrible mood, and a worse vision. But no one can get rid of it, because if you sit down, you won't see anything.
"It's not your boss who makes you work overtime, it's someone else who is willing to work overtime." A famous quote by economist Xue Zhaofeng, although cruel, is extremely true.
The result of "involution" may be a dead end.
Now China's most "involution" industry is none other than new energy vehicles. Li Shufu, the boss of Geely Automobile, said a few days ago that the price war of China's new energy vehicles is intensifying, and the "degree of involution" ranks first in the world.
Zeng Qinghongye, chairman of GAC, also complained that involution is not a way. "What is the goal of the business? It's profitable. And what is the purpose of profit? It is to contribute to the country and society, pay taxes, and create jobs. But what about layoffs these days? GAC Group also had to lay off a lot of employees. What will be the impact on society and the country? ”
Recently, Guangqi Honda has launched a layoff of more than 1,000 employees, which has a huge impact.
In the past two days, the major car companies have collectively "bombarded" their ideals, boycotted their release of weekly sales lists, and stopped rolling each other up. "Please Li Xiang stop."
After looking at it in a circle, I am afraid that only BYD is the one who welcomes the involution.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, said that the "volume" brought by competition is a catalyst for technological breakthroughs and industrial upgrading, and a driving force for the birth of excellent products. Encourage the industry to embrace this natural law and seek breakthroughs from competition instead of getting into anxiety.
This, I'm afraid it's because of BYD, I'm not anxious!
Just two days ago, BYD's off-road vehicle brand Formula Leopard announced that it would lower the price of the only model "Leopard 5" on sale by 50,000 yuan, so that car owners had to go to the store to pull banners to express their dissatisfaction.
In fact, the price of new energy vehicles has been falling in price for the past few years. According to the China Passenger Car Association, the average purchase price of the new energy vehicle market as a whole dropped from 191,000 yuan in March 2023 to 172,300 yuan in March 2024, and the price of new energy vehicles decreased by 9.8% year-on-year in one year.
This has caused tremendous pressure on car companies in the industry. You must know that the profit margin of the automotive industry is only 5.0%, which is lower than the average profit margin of 6.4% of downstream industrial enterprises. Such falling prices are extremely squeezing on costs and management.
So why does BYD welcome "involution"? The answer lies in production capacity and market share.
In 2023, the market concentration of the top five NEV sales companies will increase from 59.9% in 2022 to 67.0% in 2023, an increase of 7.1 percentage points!
Let's use the "theatrical effect" as an inappropriate analogy:
It's really uncomfortable to stand and watch the drama, but BYD is standing in the front row! Besides, after the other people are out of the field, they can sit comfortably again.
I'd rather be tired than kill others, that's what I mean.
The industry that is also rolled into twist is the e-commerce industry of "losing yourself to death and making everyone happy", and tens of millions of e-commerce people have long been overwhelmed.
In the past, when it came to the big promotion, the platform still had various calculation rules, but now they are all "straight down" and "discount on discount", and the competition is "the lowest in the whole network" and "really low price".
Especially since the end of December last year, Taobao, Jingdong, and Pinduoduo have been in full swing in a "refund-only" business "war", which has made countless merchants miserable.
What is "refund only"? That is to say, if you buy something and don't like it, you can not only receive a refund from the merchant, but you don't have to return the thing. "Smart people" reacted immediately, isn't this "0 yuan purchase"?
As a result, the original "refund only" policy issued by overseas e-commerce has turned into a "welfare" for domestic e-commerce platforms to "please" consumers. Some strange phenomena are numerous:
Some people buy a washing machine for 1400 yuan, and they only apply for a refund because they can't install it, and some people don't ship it and don't refund it, and they only refund it once it is shipped......
In May this year, an online store owner in Shanghai traveled long distances to Kaifeng, Henan Province, to recover 12 pairs of socks worth less than 100 yuan, and asked buyers face-to-face for explanations.
Now, as soon as the horn of "anti-involution" sounds, the platform responds the most quickly, and immediately ceasefires!
Recently, Taobao, Douyin, and Pinduoduo have all made adjustments and abandoned the orientation of low prices as the core. From August 10, Taobao will successively launch a series of adjustments for "refund only". According to the new regulations, according to the new version of the experience score, the after-sales autonomy of merchants will be enhanced, and after-sales intervention will be reduced or cancelled for high-quality stores.
For merchants with a ≥ score of 4.8 points in the overall experience of the store, the platform will not actively intervene through Want Want to support only refunds after receipt, but encourages merchants to negotiate with consumers first. For merchants in other segments, the platform will give different degrees of independent disposal rights according to the experience score and the nature of the industry. The higher the experience score, the greater the merchant's disposal power.
At the same time, Taobao has also made adjustments to the refund appeal link only, after the merchant initiates an appeal, the platform will ask a third-party testing agency to conduct a random inspection of the goods, and if the test is passed, the platform will compensate the merchant for the loss; Only refunds for higher amounts will be refunded, and the platform customer service will manually review them.
According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, Taobao has also strengthened the identification of abnormal behaviors such as abnormal high-frequency only refunds, sending back empty packages with fewer pieces, and refunds for high-frequency fake goods, that is, saying no to the "wool party".
Taobao, Douyin, and Pinduoduo have all announced that they will re-set the growth of gross merchandise value (GMV) as their primary goal!
This means that merchants no longer need to blindly roll low prices, as long as they achieve a balance between factors such as customer unit price and order volume, they can make a profitable business.
Millions of merchants finally breathed a long sigh of relief.
Another hard-hit area of "involution" is actually not enterprises, but family education. "Anti-involution", in fact, the education industry has already begun!
Last fall, "the first month of school, the child psychiatric department was full!" The news once went viral on the Internet. A psychiatrist said: Behind every sick child, there is a pair of "sick" parents.
The child has no friends and says it's because of bad grades.
The child scored 99 points in the test and asked how many 100 points there were in the class.
When the child won the first place in the class, he asked the whole school how many places he had.
The comparison of children is a chronic disease of parents. But today, an exciting change is that the most "rolled" Chinese parents have taken the lead in "thinking about it"!
"National education looks at Beijing, and Beijing's education looks at Haidian" is a widely circulated sentence in the education circles. But now, Haidian's mothers have decided not to be "chicken babies" anymore!
One obvious change is that the number of children attending international schools and international departments has decreased significantly.
Originally, after the scores of the high school entrance examination, the international department of the first echelon would be filled immediately, but this year, there are still places after the first day of the score;
The international department of the second echelon has reduced the number of points by 10 points to recruit students, and some international departments have directly dropped to 600 points. Anyone who has taken the exam knows that there is no one point in the playground, and there is also a half playground, and the one-time drop of 10 points is unbelievable.
Not only Beijing, but also the magic capitals of Shanghai and Nanjing have also seen this kind of trend.
In May this year, the autumn entrance exams of Shanghai International School were supposed to be in full swing, but the actual situation was shocking, and the number of people taking the exams at the top schools was only half of that of previous years.
It seems that the parents who originally gave up the domestic high school entrance examination to squeeze into the threshold of international schools have really become fewer this time.
Someone said: "Even if we are the 'chicken babies' of the post-90s generation who grow up, even if we have already surpassed our parents in ability, we still can't surpass our post-60s parents in terms of wealth and achievements."
Why bother, do you want to roll it?
In fact, the birth of the "involution economy" actually has deep roots. The background is that after the increase in China's economic base, the growth rate has slowed down and the transformation has been difficult.
In other words, the stock era of economic competition has arrived.
"Involution" vicious competition is to fight a price war without a lower limit, squeeze the upstream and downstream living space, and the last one dominates and monopolizes all resources.
Found out? In fact, behind the involution competition in many industries is the competition between local governments.
Zheng Yongnian put forward a point of view, saying,
When all local governments are involved in involution, the result is an increase in the cost of doing business for the government. Thus, even if competition can produce literal economic figures, it will not promote the growth of the overall welfare of the people, that is, there will be no real development.
At this time, if sufficient investment cannot be obtained from external and private capital stimulus, or domestic production capacity cannot be digested through the external market, then the stock fight becomes inevitable.
In many places, the government has made efforts to compete for the resources of existing enterprises by introducing "extraordinary preferential treatments", including lowering land costs and even providing free land and tax refunds, which can easily lead to ineffective attrition of policies.
Aren't these "involution"?
In fact, from today (August 1), the "Fair Competition Review Regulations" will come into effect. Among them, what has attracted much attention is that without the basis of laws and regulations or the approval of the State Council, it is not allowed to "give tax incentives to specific business operators".
In the past, tax incentives, which were an important means of attracting investment, must be withdrawn from the stage of history! More changes are happening.
Next, what is the general direction of anti-involution? The high-level meeting also gave a clear line:
To put it simply, one is self-discipline. Industry alliances and industry associations will play a greater role in coordinating the interests of all parties and avoiding radical actions in the short term.
The second is the survival of the fittest, so that inefficient production capacity can be withdrawn in time, so that the competition is not so fierce and not so volatile.
There is a more important direction, which is to go to sea. To foreign investment, to the market, two-way opening, the door of the door is wide open.
When our production capacity is effectively released, prices rise benignly, employment is stable, young people no longer have to work hard to take public and postgraduate examinations, and the working hours gradually decline, this is a healthy society.
Looking back, those young people who pursued "Buddhism" and "lying flat" in advance may be at the forefront of the times and represent the direction of progress.
The trend of anti-involution has long been turbulent, and a new era will come?