Despite achieving tremendous success, Liu Qiangdong has never lost his humble roots at heart.

**Liu Qiangdong Returns to Suqian for Street Food, Shares Drinks with Fellow Townspeople**

On Chinese Valentine's Day, Liu Qiangdong, who had not been seen publicly for some time, quietly appeared in his hometown of Suqian, Jiangsu Province, accompanied by senior executives including current JD.com CEO Xu Ran.

Dressed in formal attire with a white shirt, suit pants, and leather shoes, he embodied the image of a "returning business tycoon." Wherever he went, crowds of onlookers gathered like flowing water.

Returning to his familiar hometown, Liu appeared exceptionally relaxed and cheerful, smiling and waving to fellow townspeople without any airs of a billionaire mogul.

This homecoming wasn't merely a nostalgic visit - he came with business objectives. Based on photos shared by netizens, Liu toured the soon-to-open JD discount supermarket and conducted personal field research. Additionally, he visited several other JD offline stores.

After a busy day, Liu quietly appeared at Suqian's night market at 1 AM, wanting to taste hometown delicacies. He directly patronized street food stalls, with onlookers live-streaming throughout his visit. Liu showed no restraint, sitting in a circle with locals, putting his arms around fellow townspeople's shoulders at the food stalls, and raising plastic basins filled with alcohol to drink heartily while chatting and laughing.

Netizens shared videos showing him being toasted by many locals, with some noting his face turned red from drinking. Without luxurious decorations or deliberate arrangements, there were only the most authentic street stalls and purest hometown sentiment - genuine and down-to-earth.

This reminds people of previous instances when founder Liu personally delivered takeout orders and invited delivery riders to eat hotpot and share drinks while speaking from the heart.

Notably, today's Jiangsu Super League will feature a Suqian vs. Huaian match, and Liu may also attend to cheer for his hometown team. During the 2025 Summer Davos Forum, when asked about the Suqian match, Liu responded: "Go? I must go!"

Liu's personal return to his hometown Suqian to eat at street stalls and visit JD discount supermarkets bears striking similarity to when Jack Ma appeared at Freshippo stores in the past. Liu has clearly identified the enormous opportunity in the sinking market.

**JD Discount Supermarket Opens Four Stores Simultaneously in Suqian on August 30**

On August 30, JD discount supermarket will open four stores simultaneously in Suqian. Many local netizens gathered at the discount supermarkets for observation, live-streaming while saying they were "waiting for Boss Liu to cut the ribbon."

The four stores are located at Hope City in the Economic Development Zone, Shuyang Central Mall, Sihong Wuyue Plaza, and Siyang Sunshine Plaza - all local commercial landmarks in Suqian, either backed by densely populated residential areas with strong consumer demand.

All stores exceed 5,000 square meters with over 5,000 SKUs, larger than the first store in Zhuozhou. Leveraging JD's omni-channel advantages, Suqian consumers can both shop in-store for pickup and place orders through the JD app, enjoying delivery services as fast as 30 minutes, allowing them to easily purchase needed goods without leaving home, greatly enhancing shopping convenience.

Clearly, JD discount stores' confidence in low prices stems from its massive self-operated supply chain.

**Liu Qiangdong's Practical Actions for His Hometown**

For his hometown Suqian, Liu has consistently delivered real results through actions. He once spent over 30 million yuan of his own money to provide New Year goods and cash red envelopes to hometown folks, with thousands of villagers lining up with tricycles to collect them.

Not only that, he prepared 100,000 yuan red envelopes for his elementary school teacher and distributed 10,000 yuan red envelopes to each villager over 60 years old.

Suqian has also become famous because of JD.com. From an unknown small city in Jiangsu to today's "e-commerce famous city," the outside world generally believes Suqian's rapid development is inseparable from Liu Qiangdong.

To give back to his hometown, Liu decided to build JD's customer service center in Suqian. However, this decision initially faced considerable opposition, as Suqian was economically backward with talent shortage and high construction costs at the time.

But Liu insisted on his choice, stating: "People must have a grateful heart. If even I don't return to invest in my hometown, how can I attract other enterprises to invest here?"

Eventually, he overcame all opposition and consolidated customer service departments scattered across Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing into Suqian. Today, this call center that initially had only 80 employees has developed into an industry driving employment for over 20,000 people, 70% of whom are Suqian locals.

In 2016, Liu jokingly said: "JD customer service has almost recruited all people in Suqian who can use computers and speak Mandarin. Now we can only recruit from surrounding cities."

**JD Discount Supermarket Becomes Popular, Attracting Over 10,000 Visitors**

Of course, JD discount supermarket also features numerous private label brands. Currently, stores carry over 1,000 JD private label products, accounting for about 20% of total SKUs.

On August 16, JD discount supermarket's first national store opened in Zhuozhou, Hebei. This 5,000 square meter flagship discount supermarket received over 100,000 customers in just two days of operation.

Two-day sales far exceeded double the previous JD discount supermarket Beijing pilot store's opening performance, setting new sales records for JD discount format stores and creating current market records for discount supermarket formats.

Nearly two weeks after opening, daily customer flow remains consistently packed, showing robust supply and demand with continued popularity.

The key to attracting consumers remains the affordable prices of goods in the supermarket. JD previously stated that these products are generally priced below regular market prices.

From official JD discount supermarket product information, many ultra-low-priced items were launched at opening, such as 16.9 yuan/jin golden pillow durians, 9.9 yuan for 30 fresh eggs, 5.99 yuan/jin pork shoulder, significantly below market prices, truly delivering on the "everyday low prices" promise.

In fact, as early as June last year, JD piloted offline discount supermarkets in Beijing, with the first "Huaguan Discount Supermarket" landing in Changyang, Fangshan District, covering multiple surrounding areas.

This full-category discount supermarket spans approximately 3,000 square meters, relying on JD's powerful supply chain system with products mainly featuring direct factory sourcing and attracting consumers with "everyday low prices."

In December of the same year, JD opened a second similar supermarket in Fangshan District, integrating supermarket products into online channels, providing dual services of offline shopping and online ordering.

**Offline Hard Discount: New Hope for Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan**

After resisting takeout industry involution, Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan have shifted competitive focus to offline hard discount supermarket sectors, launching new rounds of competition.

Media revealed that Meituan's hard discount supermarket project is called "Happy Monkey," set to officially open stores in August this year, with the first batch planning one store in Beijing and two in Hangzhou, following the Freshippo NB business model, with initial store areas of approximately 800-1000 square meters.

On Alibaba's side, Freshippo announced closure of all membership stores, with the last Freshippo X membership store nationwide closing by the end of July, marking Freshippo's complete farewell to the membership store format.

Simply put, focusing on markets with greater growth potential. Subsequently, Freshippo announced its latest store opening plan, with Freshippo Fresh planning to open nearly 100 stores within the fiscal year, bringing total Freshippo stores to an expected 500+.

Freshippo's hard discount store brand is Freshippo NB stores, with 700-800㎡ standard stores focusing on fresh standard products, and 50-100㎡ pickup stores covering 3-kilometer communities. These stores aren't solely offline but combine stores, forward warehouses, and pickup points.

The logic of so-called hard discount is simple - selling products cheaply by reducing costs from the source. The core of hard discount models lies in "low prices + high efficiency." Through direct factory sourcing, private label customization, and streamlined SKUs, eliminating intermediary steps, reducing costs, benefiting consumers while ensuring product quality.

Typical hard discount stores include ALDI, LIDL, Costco, and Sam's Club.

From market potential perspective, China's discount retail market is in expansion phase with significant potential. Supply and demand sides catalyze a trillion-yuan special sales market. According to iimedia Research, China's discount retail industry market size reached 1.62 trillion yuan in 2021, up 2.12% year-over-year, with a 5-year CAGR of 4%.

Major e-commerce giants use private labels as entry points, directly connecting factories to create low-priced products while strengthening control over upstream supply chains, establishing consumer mindsets with "quality + low prices."

Compared to pure price wars, this model is more conducive to long-term stable development, which explains why Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan collectively bet on offline discount stores.

For consumers, this means being able to enjoy higher-quality goods and services at lower prices in the future. For the industry, this model may become a new growth engine for retail.

We look forward to more new stories emerging from the internet industry.