China's comprehensive industrial system and supply chain network are becoming key assets for companies building long-term competitiveness. Recently, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, stated that despite facing multiple shocks, the Chinese economy has demonstrated significant resilience. The IMF forecasts China's economic growth to reach 5% in 2025, an upward revision of 0.2 percentage points from the World Economic Outlook report released in October this year. International financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley subsequently followed suit with adjustments to their forecasts. Behind this series of actions, international capital is focusing not only on China's vast consumer market but also on the systemic resilience demonstrated by "Made in China" in a complex global environment. Meanwhile, Chinese e-commerce platform PDD announced its core strategy for the next three years at its annual general meeting of shareholders: heavily investing in China's supply chain to achieve the goal of "rebuilding another PDD." Co-Chairman Chen Lei revealed at the meeting that Temu "covered in 3 years the path that took PDD's domestic e-commerce 10 years," and the scale of the two is now nearly equivalent. These events may seem independent, but they collectively point to an ongoing trend: in a global environment full of uncertainty, China's complete industrial system and supply chain network are becoming key assets for companies building long-term competitiveness. PDD's strategic pivot serves as a concrete case study within this grand narrative.

The growth logic of China's internet industry is undergoing a profound transformation. Li Mingtao, a member of the Expert Committee of National E-commerce Demonstration Cities, pointed out that the e-commerce industry has moved beyond the era of traffic dividends, with stagnating user growth and soaring customer acquisition costs forcing business model innovation. Data corroborates this assessment. According to a report from the third-party research firm QuestMobile, as of September 2025, the total number of internet users in China reached 1.269 billion, a year-on-year increase of 2%. Over the past few years, this figure has remained within a low growth range of 0.6% to 2.6%. Against this backdrop, the focus of competition for platform economies is shifting from horizontal expansion of user scale to the vertical deepening of user value. Liu Chunsheng, an associate professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics, analyzed that this environmental change is prompting platform companies to rethink their growth paths, "attempting to systematically transform a temporary 'tactical advantage' into a sustainable 'structural advantage'." For e-commerce platforms, this means they must transcend the simple logic of traffic monetization and seek deeper ways to create value. The intent behind PDD's strategic upgrade is to achieve a value leap—transforming from a mere "mover" of the supply chain to an entity that deeply embeds itself within, empowers, and even reshapes the supply chain. This signifies that its core growth engine is shifting from leveraging traffic to leveraging industry. Simultaneously, the systemic advantages of Chinese manufacturing provide a realistic foundation for this transformation. Bai Ming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, noted that China's supply chains are rooted in the world's most complete industrial system and are also reliant on the world's largest consumer market. This completeness is reflected in the effects of industrial agglomeration—China boasts hundreds of specialized industrial clusters covering complete industrial chains from raw materials to finished products.

Taking the children's wear industry in Foshan, Guangdong as an example, the entire process from fabric procurement to finished garment production can be completed within a 50-kilometer radius. The efficiency advantages brought by this agglomeration enable Temu to achieve "small-batch, quick-response" production globally—rapidly adjusting production based on sales data and compressing inventory turnover days to less than one-third of traditional models. Behind Temu's achievement of covering in three years what took PDD's main platform a decade, lies the support of this highly efficient supply chain capability. At a deeper level, PDD's strategic choice is based on a structural resonance between both supply and demand sides. On one hand, a large number of Chinese manufacturing enterprises face transformation pressure. OEM factories long stuck at the bottom of the value chain have thin profit margins, lack brand premium and channel control, and urgently need digital capabilities and new market access to achieve transformation and upgrading. On the other hand, PDD also faces new challenges in overseas markets. The rapid growth achieved early on through the cost advantage of Chinese supply chains and traffic strategies is now encountering stricter compliance scrutiny and localized competition. The platform needs to build more sustainable competitiveness, which is no longer just about price advantage, but overall supply chain efficiency, quality assurance, and compliance capabilities. Factories need the market access and digital capabilities provided by the platform, while the platform needs the manufacturing foundation and upgrade potential of the factories. This mutual need constitutes the realistic basis for the deep binding between the platform and the supply chain. PDD's choice to heavily invest in China's supply chain essentially involves deeply binding the company's future growth with the transformation and upgrading process of Chinese manufacturing—this is not simply a tilt of resources, but a re-anchoring of the development path in an era of存量竞争 (stock competition).

How is this deep binding achieved from the platform economy to the real economy? Observing PDD's practices reveals three clear pathways. The first is data-driven manufacturing transformation. The C2M (Customer-to-Manufacturer) model is widely regarded as an effective way to connect the consumption end with the manufacturing end. Its core lies in using consumer data feedback to guide production decisions, shortening the cycle from demand discovery to product launch. The value of this model is particularly evident in the transformation of traditional manufacturing. Taking eyewear manufacturing as an example, after an enterprise developed new products based on overseas design trends and functional insights provided by the platform and completed independent trademark registration, the product's selling price and profit increased by nearly 50%. The key to this transformation lies in the enterprise shifting from "producing to order" to "researching and developing based on market demand," reducing the blindness of production decisions. Enterprises facing industry-wide cost pressures can also find breakthroughs through this path. In 2024, global cocoa raw material prices rose sharply, putting pressure on the chocolate industry. However, the established Shanghai chocolate company "Shenpu" bucked the trend by upgrading raw material quality and optimizing packaging. Supported by platform data, its products accurately targeted the healthy snack market, achieving a several-fold increase in annual sales revenue.

If C2M addresses the question of "what to make," then how resources effectively reach the production end relates to "how to make it better." In April 2025, PDD launched a "Hundred Billion Support" plan, pledging to invest over one hundred billion yuan over three years to support the transformation of industrial belts. A characteristic of this plan is that resources are directed straight to the production end. Specialized "New Quality Supply" teams delve into industrial belts across the country, providing targeted solutions. In Anxin County, Hebei, the local footwear industry was long trapped in low-end, homogenized competition. The team used traffic support to guide enterprises to develop mid-to-high-end products like carbon plate running shoes, successfully driving single-store monthly sales to exceed one million yuan. In Yongkang, Zhejiang, the team helped kitchenware enterprises simplify production processes, halving the production cycle for electronic scales. This deep involvement significantly lowers the barrier to transformation for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. The head of a pet supplies factory in Yancheng, Jiangsu, stated that innovative products like washable dog beds developed under the platform's guidance now consistently receive over a thousand orders per day.

The value of platform empowerment is reflected not only in short-term sales data but also in the long-term accumulation of enterprise capabilities. The development of the Guangzhou light health brand "Qingshang" provides an observation sample. The brand's sales on the platform were only one to two million yuan in 2022, but are projected to exceed 250 million yuan in 2025. Its operations director stated that the forward-looking consumer trend insights provided by the platform have become an important reference for product R&D, enabling the company to transform market insights into specific products within 7 days. More instructive is the overseas experience of the Chinese tissue brand "Sipiao." As early as 2017, the brand transplanted the "quality-price ratio" model it developed domestically to the Vietnamese market, ranking among the top five in the local market within three years. Its chairman坦言 (candidly stated) that the experience of co-evolving with the platform domestically provided the core capability foundation for its overseas expansion.

The impact of this deep binding between platforms and supply chains has transcended the commercial considerations of individual enterprises, demonstrating multiple significances at the industry level. First is the multi-dimensional activation of the domestic demand market. The direct effect of supply chain transformation is the quality improvement and expansion of the consumer market. According to PDD's "2025 Agricultural Product Upstream Sales Half-Year Report," sales of agricultural products on the platform increased by 47% year-on-year. In Laiyang, Shandong, apples and pears affected by declining exports found sales channels through e-commerce, with cumulative sales for a single store exceeding 1.6 million orders.

Traditional brands are also being revitalized in this process. Six months after Tianjin's "Leba" potato chips joined the platform, order volume increased approximately tenfold, transforming from a regional brand into a national brand. This "direct connection from origin to consumer" model, while enhancing the richness of consumer choice, also allows more value to remain at the production end. Secondly, it represents a systematic upgrade of the overseas expansion model. Temu's rapid development, to some extent, reflects the evolution of Chinese manufacturing's出海 (overseas expansion) models. The traditional model relied mainly on cost advantages, essentially involving the cross-border flow of goods. The emerging model places greater emphasis on the output of overall supply chain capabilities. Through C2M, global consumption data can directly guide the R&D direction of Chinese factories; through services like full hosting, the platform handles complex aspects such as cross-border logistics and marketing promotion. This enables manufacturing enterprises to focus more on product innovation and production optimization, transforming from passive order recipients into active participants with market perception capabilities. Finally, it involves a redefinition of platform value. This practice is also sparking a rethinking of the value of the platform economy. Li Mingtao believes that the new value of e-commerce platforms is shifting from mere transaction facilitation to the co-construction of industrial ecosystems. This means the platform's role needs to evolve from an "aggregator" of traffic to a "promoter" of industrial upgrading.

This role shift places higher demands on platform capabilities. Liu Chunsheng pointed out that the new path requires platforms to possess global compliance governance capabilities, cross-cultural brand operation capabilities, and deep technological empowerment capabilities for the supply chain. From coping with the regulatory requirements of different markets to managing logistics networks covering the globe, these challenges exceed the operational scope of traditional e-commerce platforms. The upward revision of China's economic growth expectations by international institutions and PDD's strategic choice to heavily invest in China's supply chain, while seemingly events from different dimensions, jointly reflect a judgment on the same trend: in a global environment full of uncertainty, China's complete industrial system is becoming an important stabilizing force. The current global supply chain landscape is being reshaped, with supply chain security and efficiency becoming a focus for various countries. Against this backdrop, the systemic advantages of Chinese manufacturing are manifested not only as production efficiency but also as the resilience and elasticity to cope with external shocks.

PDD's strategic practice is a meaningful industry exploration. It tests a key proposition: can digital platforms transcend their traditional role as transaction facilitators and play a more constructive role in the transformation and upgrading of the real economy? The answer to this question relates not only to the development of platform enterprises themselves but also to the depth and quality of the integration of the digital economy and the real economy. This exploration is still ongoing. Its final outcome will provide a valuable reference case for the competitive strategies of Chinese enterprises in the new phase of overseas expansion. Regardless of the outcome, the choice to deeply bind enterprise development with the upgrading process of Chinese manufacturing is itself an important confirmation of industrial development规律 (laws/patterns). In the process of shifting from the "competition for traffic" to "deep cultivation of value," the supply chain is becoming the new strategic anchor point for the platform economy.