During this period, Pang Donglai[1] has been taking strong actions against purchasing agents, implementing restrictions such as membership-based shopping, dynamic codes for membership card checkout, and weekly purchase limits on certain products. On December 15th, Pang Donglai announced new controls, including canceling member consumption points, and plans to introduce stricter measures like real-name purchases and regular, quota-based buying systems.
Pang Donglai brands itself as a “People’s Enterprise,” leveraging monopoly tactics in procurement, logistics, and other means to lower product costs, attracting many customers with low prices, which has also led to the rise of opportunistic purchasing agents. One type is small-scale purchasing, such as charging 15 yuan for transactions under 300 yuan, and 30 yuan for over 1000 yuan. Another is large-scale organized purchasing groups, with single transactions reaching up to 300,000 yuan and earning 50,000 yuan per deal. In the current economic downturn, the large-scale sale of goods should be a good thing for Pang Donglai, similar to how Sam’s Club encourages purchasing agents. However, Pang Donglai has taken strong actions against purchasing agents. Of course, they worry about counterfeit stores deceiving consumers and damaging their reputation, but they also have not actively promoted their online mall to expand their sales market.
Why would a “People’s” enterprise that isn’t aiming for higher profits crack down on purchasing agents? Clearly, there are deeper interests involved.
If Pang Donglai truly wanted more consumers to buy products, as they claim, they could simply increase production to boost profits. But increasing production would undermine their monopoly pricing[2]. In reality, their actions are not for customer benefit but to hollow out consumers’ wallets. For example, Pang Donglai’s Life Plaza is not just a supermarket but a department store with cinemas, bookstores, restaurants, and more. If customers shop offline and spend elsewhere, Pang Donglai can still earn additional revenue. A large portion of their sales are in fresh produce, baked goods, and cooked foods, which have short shelf lives and are not suitable for long-distance sales. Purchasing agents do not buy these items, and attracting customers to shop offline can help promote these products. Additionally, Pang Donglai has long colluded with the Henan local government to attract more offline customers to XuChang, Henan.
On New Year’s Day 2024, according to XuChang’s cultural and tourism department, the holiday saw 1 million visitors to Pang Donglai, 75% of whom were from outside the area. During the Spring Festival holiday, XuChang received 8.176 million tourists, a 173% increase compared to 2023; tourism revenue reached 5.069 billion yuan, a 543% increase[3]. This brought enormous income to the XuChang government. In March 2024, the Henan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism issued a document calling Pang Donglai a “6A Scenic Spot” in XuChang, and in the 2024 Henan Provincial Two Sessions, “supporting Pang Donglai and other traffic-generating supermarkets” was included in the provincial government’s work report. The local government also aims to revive many feudal relics and use Cao Wei ancient city to create “supermarket + cultural tourism” and “supermarket + research learning” attractions to lure tourists; Hanfu shop owners have made big profits from high foot traffic. All these earnings come from offline tourists. If purchasing agents rise, fewer tourists will come, and the local government will lose this tourism revenue. For Pang Donglai, purchasing agents can only sell more products, so they must crack down on these groups to carve out their share.
The “People’s” capitalists like Yu Donglai and the Zhongxiu government do not want the profits that could flow into their pockets to instead go into purchasing agents’ pockets, which is why they ban purchasing agents. Yu Donglai himself said, “Capitalists are just xx,” only caring about making money, but isn’t he the same?
For the essence of Pang Donglai, see: 无产阶级解放斗争协会机关刊物——《曙光》创刊号 “Don’t Let Floating Clouds Obscure Your Eyes—Unveiling the Mask of Pang Donglai’s ‘Love and Freedom’!” ↩︎
For revelations about Pang Donglai’s high product prices, see: 无产阶级解放斗争协会机关刊物——《曙光》创刊号 “Don’t Let Floating Clouds Obscure Your Eyes—Unveiling the Mask of Pang Donglai’s ‘Love and Freedom’!” ↩︎