Originally published at: 莫为浮云遮望眼——揭开胖东来“爱与自由”的画皮！ – 曙光
Editorial Office of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
In March 2023, a salary and treatment chart of Pangdonglai (胖东来) surged to the top of the hot search. The chart shows that Pangdonglai will subsidize employees who are "treated unfairly for working according to the normal process" with 5,000–8,000 yuan, sparking a wave of惊呼 from netizens. The lively "employee benefits" marketing followed closely, frequently triggering heated discussions: "Employees enjoy 30–40 days of paid annual leave, management achieves 190 days off throughout the year," "Set ten days of unhappy leave for employees; if they don't want to work, they can take leave; if management refuses, it's illegal," "Work six to seven hours, no overtime allowed; if overtime occurs, fines are imposed"[1]. Since then, a previously obscure local retail chain has become a prominent guest in the middle-class public opinion arena. Pangdonglai's owner, Yu Donglai, even personally declared: "Overtime is not allowed; it's shameless, ignorant, and immoral."[2] At Pangdonglai, Yu Donglai forbids employees from calling him general manager or boss, insisting they call him "Brother Donglai" [3], as if he and his employees are truly close kin, sharing life and death.
In December 2023, Pangdonglai Tea Supermarket announced that due to high sales volume, its operating hours in Xuchang were changed from 9:30–21:30 to 10:30–18:00. Yu Donglai stated: "The tea department used to sell only four or five million yuan, but now it can sell over twenty million a day. The sales are too high, and the labor intensity is too great, too exhausting... If it goes on like this, they will get sick, and the quality of their work will decline"[4]. His heartfelt concern was evident. In 2024, Yu Donglai announced that Pangdonglai employees would gain an additional 10 days of "unhappy leave," "management cannot refuse; refusing is illegal," and planned to raise the upper limit of the "grievance award" to 30,000 yuan. Moreover, he announced plans to take all employees abroad to "see the outside world," "go to farther places," and "stand on the roof of the world to look at ourselves." Suddenly, many exhausted "working people" cheered, finally finding an enterprise that does not PUA employees, treats employees as human beings. Yu Donglai became their kindred spirit, and Pangdonglai became their "labor kingdom" they longed for day and night.
Besides, "Pangdonglai" also brands itself with "sincerity in hospitality" as its "hardest branding." Yu Donglai claims to run a "completely transparent" business, with each product's cost and selling price clearly marked. Customers dissatisfied with their purchase can return or refund without reason, and products sold can be repaired for life by Pangdonglai's repair team. Additionally, Pangdonglai has various customer service facilities and meticulous customer service. In June 2024, when a customer reported poor hygiene at Pangdonglai's "hand-pulled noodle" processing site, Pangdonglai immediately closed all stalls and awarded the customer 100,000 yuan in cash; refunded all customers who bought hand-pulled noodles and spicy noodles within the time limit, with a total compensation of 8.933 million yuan[5]. Despite this, Pangdonglai still made a profit of 1.4 billion yuan in the past year, a remarkable achievement for a supermarket chain only operating in Henan Province. Under this banner of genuine products, excellent service, and respect for employee rights, Pangdonglai has become a model of "supermarket god" in various media, widely regarded as an outstanding benchmark for achieving a "win-win-win" situation for customers, enterprises, and employees. Many netizens affectionately call Pangdonglai a "Communist supermarket," "a benchmark for socialist enterprises worldwide," and Yu Donglai a "living saint," transforming into a "lovable Marxist." Some even say that Pangdonglai's success "proves that enterprises can still be highly profitable while fully guaranteeing workers' vacations and benefits... The essence of 996 is not backward productivity but capitalist greed."[6] But is this really the case? Under the brutal rule of the Sino-imperialist empire, does a paradise for workers truly exist? This article will thoroughly analyze the true face of Yu Donglai and Pangdonglai.
A local tyrant who extorts and oppresses
Pangdonglai's predecessor—"Wangyuelou Pangzi Store"—was an ordinary retail supermarket, extracting a portion of surplus value as commercial profit by helping industrial capital realize commodity circulation, and the value and surplus value of commodities.
"Because the circulation stage of industrial capital, like production, forms a stage of the reproduction process, so in the circulation process, capital that performs functions independently must also provide an average annual profit, just like capital performing functions in different production departments."[7] If the commercial profit rate is lower than the industrial profit rate, merchants will consider business unprofitable and transfer their capital to the industrial sector. Since the commercial sector does not have as large and complex technical equipment as the industrial sector, capital transfer is easier. Conversely, industrial capital will also transfer to the commercial sector. Through competition among various commercial and industrial sectors, and through capital transfers between them, roughly equal profits are obtained for commercial and industrial capital. In the same commercial sector, the markup on goods sold is fixed, but how profits are distributed among commercial capitals depends on their respective turnover speeds. The faster the turnover, the higher the annual profit rate for individual capital. Therefore, Yu Donglai uses the "bulk sales" model, leveraging the advantage of faster capital turnover, selling goods at lower prices in competition, and maintaining a sustained "small profit, quick turnover" strategy.In 1992, China's State Council issued the "Reply on the Use of Foreign Investment in Commercial Retail," officially allowing foreign-invested enterprises in apparel and department stores to enter retail in specific regions through joint ventures. In 1995, the scope was expanded to include food and chain operations. In November 2001, China officially joined the WTO, further opening its market to foreign monopolistic capital. Since then, foreign retail giants have continuously flooded into China, beginning large-scale expansion in 2004. To counter the impact of powerful foreign monopolies, in 2001–2002, Xuchang Pangdonglai Trading Group jointly initiated and established the "Four-Party Joint Procurement" organization with Nanyang Wandelong, Xinyang Xiya Meishi, and Luoyang Dazhang companies. The participants were small and medium retail businesses relying on joint capital to survive and expand under foreign capital pressure. In 2006, the "Four-Party Joint Procurement" became the general agent for IGA (International Grocery Alliance) in Henan[8], unifying supplier negotiations under IGA and controlling the supply of products for all participating companies. With sufficient stock, the "Four-Party Joint Procurement" also sold large quantities of fruits and vegetables at wholesale markets. According to Luoyang Dazhang's chairman Zhang Guoxian, in 2007, the combined revenue of the four companies grew at an astonishing annual rate of 30–40%[9]. Backed by IGA, the "Four-Party Joint Procurement" monopolized sourcing, set sales regions and prices, and dominated Henan's retail industry.
Thanks to the "Four-Party Joint Procurement," Pangdonglai smoothly carried out a "hybrid merger"—gradually expanding from a simple retail supermarket to a "lifestyle plaza" including leisure, catering, entertainment, and other parasitic consumption; a "vertical merger"—integrating wholesale and retail businesses—eliminating intermediate links and surplus value transfer, thus reducing commercial profit loss; a "horizontal merger"—monopolizing sources and squeezing out competitors—seriously encroaching on the survival space of surrounding small and medium supermarkets, causing many to close. Pangdonglai has become a "shadow" over Xuchang's retail industry, with a "no-supermarket zone" within a kilometer radius of each store, even small shops cannot open. On the ruins of countless small shops closing and small producers going bankrupt, Pangdonglai's commercial empire rose.
As a local tyrant in Xuchang and a member of IGA, Pangdonglai used business concentration to squeeze suppliers, establishing a "super high cost-performance" reputation: craft beers at 2.5 yuan per can, close to industrial alcohol prices; 6-inch mooncakes at 29.8 yuan; orange juice made from five oranges at 12 yuan per liter... Many self-operated products of Pangdonglai, once on shelves, were snapped up immediately, forming a customer flow foundation. However, cheap and good products only account for a small part of Pangdonglai's total offerings; most are priced above market. For example, Xuchang's fragrant pears cost 1.5 yuan per jin, but Pangdonglai sells them at at least 6 yuan per jin[10]. Relying on the reputation built by selling "own-brand" products, Pangdonglai openly sells luxury goods in its stores, even online home sets costing up to 2,100 yuan. Suppliers' suppressed profits facilitate Pangdonglai's commercial fraud.
With the continuous expansion of capital scale, the ambitious Yu Donglai further developed "vertical mergers," extending into the industrial sector. In October 2022, Pangdonglai's integrated production base, covering 150 acres with about 160,000 square meters of buildings, planned a total investment of about 1.5 billion yuan, producing over 400 of its own brand products—from grains and oils to jewelry—covering nearly everything. Among these, the prepared foods and fast meals made daily by the central kitchen often sell out quickly, bringing substantial income. Through internal exchanges, Pangdonglai reduces logistics costs, achieving self-production and self-sales. Fully aware that once Pangdonglai leaves Xuchang, it cannot monopolize supply channels elsewhere, Yu Donglai consolidates its dominance in Xuchang and exports its products to low-income stores of Yonghui Supermarket and Bubugao Supermarket through "restructuring" collaborations. In the case of "restructuring" Yonghui Supermarket in Changsha Meixi Lake, the similarity of product structures exceeds 90% with Pangdonglai's products[11], including mooncakes, craft beer, fruit juice, laundry detergent, all bearing the "DL" logo of Pangdonglai. In the "restructured" Bubugao Supermarket in Changsha Moxi Lake, Pangdonglai's products account for 28.22% of total sales[12]. While gaining the reputation of "saving the distressed," Pangdonglai does not need to invest in new stores to realize its own product distribution. As Yu Donglai replied when asked whether he would open stores in Zhengzhou: "Going to Yonghui, isn't it just going to Pangdonglai?"
Moreover, because Pangdonglai can attract substantial customer flow, the turnover of shops inside it is faster, greatly accelerating capital turnover, often achieving more surplus value in the same time compared to other stores. Therefore, Pangdonglai charges high rent to the shops and calls it the "reward" for the overflow customer flow it provides. For example, in Pangdonglai Angel City Store, tenants do not pay fixed rent but share a percentage of turnover. The manager claims that after calculating the gross profit margin, they will deduct proportionally within a "reasonable range," claiming: "We can't let you (merchants) bear too many costs, or you won't be able to focus on making good products and serving customers"; meanwhile, they take several to twenty points from the profit of the tenants as high monopoly rent. Thus, Pangdonglai comfortably acts as the landlord, a fat parasite that does not perform any functions, greedily sucking the lifeblood of the tenants.
At this point, perhaps many still cheer for Pangdonglai: "Let him suck! Let him suck!" After all, in their eyes, Yu Donglai distributes all company shares to employees, keeping only 10%; distributes 95% of profits to employees, and only takes a salary of 3 million yuan himself, making employees enjoy "free, happy, sunny life" as "people's capitalists." Since the sweat and blood squeezed by Pangdonglai ultimately return to employees' pockets, why not let conscientious "entrepreneurs" defeat unscrupulous "capitalists"? But the truth may disappoint these "Yu Donglai followers."
A ruthless bloodsucker with a green face
Although Yu Donglai repeatedly boasts in interviews that even if he loses 70 million yuan, he will still give employees leave to rest and enjoy life, according to the nominal provisions of the "Labor Law," the general rest days, including weekends (104 days) and statutory holidays (11 days), total 115 days. However, Pangdonglai has no rest days except for Spring Festival holidays, and only one day off per week, even with its enviable 30 days of annual leave, the total days off are only 87. Is that much? Not much! Despite explicitly implementing an 8-hour workday, Yu Donglai loudly condemns overtime as "shameless, ignorant, and immoral"; standing on the side of "workers," he righteously condemns capitalist greed: "Capitalists are just fools, only thinking about making money for themselves," but he already tightly grips the whip used to beat animals. According to former employees, at Pangdonglai, working from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., even 15 hours a day, is common. In high-performance outlets, working all week without rest and overtime until late at night has become normal for some. At Pangdonglai, once the store closes, employees are not considered to be working overtime. Behind the darkened stores are brightly lit warehouses, with employees working overnight on inventory, sorting, and stocking. Pangdonglai claims that all overtime is "voluntary," entirely out of "recognition of corporate culture." Thus, Yu Donglai publicly denounces overtime as "shameless, ignorant, and immoral," but outside the camera, he justifies "voluntary overtime" and "genuine preference" by refusing to pay any overtime wages.
In an interview, Yu Donglai subtly admitted that during the "bulk sales" period, "employees stay in the store from morning to night, eating and sleeping there, not allowed to go home." Employees, like livestock, are confined in the supermarket's dormitory, and apart from necessary sleep, they are at Yu Donglai's beck and call, even needing his permission to go out. Yet he shamelessly claims: "Back then, the food in the store was very good," and keeping employees eating and living in the store was "to prevent them from learning bad habits; I am responsible for them." Some employees could no longer endure such inhumane labor and proposed to cut working hours in half, requesting only a half-shift. In response, Yu Donglai falsely accused them of "young people need to date," twisting the reasonable request to reduce labor intensity into a淫秽欲求 to satisfy their lower instincts. This "benevolent boss," supposedly caring for employees' well-being, lamented: "These people have such good conditions, why not cherish them? Earn some money to help the family," feigning enlightenment to encourage employees willing to take half-shifts, then turning around and firing all who signed up, provoking resistance. After this incident, Yu Donglai learned his lesson and gained counter-revolutionary experience: brute force alone cannot make workers submit; sometimes, he must throw a few carrots to distract them. So he recalled some workers, allowed them to halve their working hours, but sharply cut their wages, compensating with a trivial "year-end bonus," claiming it as "profit sharing." In reality, this was a ridiculous game of "trickery," aiming to make employees grateful and willingly accept the yoke, thereby driving Pangdonglai's big mill to extract more oil and water from workers.
[13]According to the 2022 "Salary Policy for All Levels of Pangdonglai Supermarket,"[14] employee wages = base salary + cultural concept evaluation bonus + professional knowledge/skills evaluation bonus + daily management evaluation bonus + job allowance - overall planning. The basic salary ranges from 3,100 to 4,000 yuan, with the rest composed of various evaluation bonuses and allowances. The base salary is also linked to performance, calculated as 50% of sales completion ratio plus 50% of gross profit completion ratio. The bonuses for cultural concept evaluation, professional knowledge/skills evaluation, and daily management evaluation are awarded based on individual scores relative to departmental rankings and their share of the total bonus pool. This method uses intra-worker competition to mask contradictions with capitalists. Workers, through continuous skill improvement, service attitude optimization, and corporate理念认同, become increasingly loyal servants favored by Pangdonglai. Additionally, Pangdonglai employs temporary workers in multiple positions, with wages of 25 yuan/hour and no additional allowances.
Compared to the nearly equal wages of regular employees, the management wages are distinctly tiered: from team leaders to store managers, base wages increase from 5,000 to 20,000 yuan; level wages from 7,000 to 50,000 yuan. Once promoted to management, evaluation bonuses are no longer scarce bonuses fought over among workers but are paid at 100% if scoring 70/80 points. Furthermore, upon promotion, Pangdonglai's benefits include flexible clock-in/out, an additional 10 days of paid leave, annual overseas travel, year-end stock dividends, and more. Through this promotion mechanism, Yu Donglai has cultivated a loyal group of cronies. Exploiting the daily 15-hour labor of ordinary employees, Pangdonglai's management achieves flexible clock-in/out and full-year 190 days off; while sucking the blood of ordinary workers, its senior management drives luxury cars worth 3 million yuan each.
It is evident that Yu Donglai's claim of profit sharing only benefits himself and his management cronies. The福利 of Pangdonglai is not designed for the masses of workers but is only distributed to a few loyal dogs that siphon the capitalists' blood. The plan for Yu Donglai to take all employees abroad reveals the relationship between management and ordinary workers. The management takes the surplus value of the capitalist labor force, happily flying to Europe to enjoy the imperialist aroma of Britain and France; while ordinary workers are sent to Southeast Asia to witness colonial and semi-colonial labor conditions, further imprinting in their minds the idea of being content with Pangdonglai's wages. The relationship between Pangdonglai's management and workers is like that between imperialist countries and colonies: the former's glory is based on the latter's ruin, the former's praise on the latter's lament, the former's rich feast on the latter's poverty.
The ownership of the means of production determines the relationships among people in production, and the relationship under capitalism is built on the capitalist ownership of the means of production. In the capitalist enterprise of Pang Donglai, the relationship between capitalists and their lackeys and ordinary employees can only be one of oppression and being oppressed, slavery and being enslaved. The bourgeoisie, in order to ensure their private power, inevitably intensifies the enslavement of workers by all means. The ordinary employees of Pang Donglai not only have no benefits to speak of but are also subjected to extremely strict labor discipline. Yu Donglai strives to establish a system of oppression and exploitation within his business empire, aiming to tame all commercial laborers into his slaves. On the official website of Pang Donglai, the operational standards for employees amount to over four hundred items. Opening the regulations for employee management, the preamble clearly states: “In our Pang Donglai company, the first thing is to be a person, requiring every Pang Donglai person to have good character, be loyal to our enterprise, and cherish our enterprise.” At the same time, viewing “disagreement or non-compliance with the company's corporate culture” as “serious violation of company rules and regulations and affecting the company's image,” it is listed as the first serious violation, and violators will be immediately dismissed. At the beginning of this system, Pang Donglai openly threatens and intimidates workers with unemployment. The full text of Pang Donglai’s regulations exceeds 12,000 words, with its core centered on the character “奴” (slave). Once employees are deemed to have committed serious violations, they will be dismissed immediately. Serious violations include: “quarreling, insulting, or fighting with others at the workplace,” “failing to select suitable products for customers from the customer’s perspective, and engaging in forced sales,” “being complained about by customers, and if the investigation confirms, disciplinary actions will be taken according to various rules; regardless of the type (except service complaints), if violations reach 5 times within a year, it will be regarded as a serious violation.” Even “riding a motorcycle or electric scooter without wearing a helmet as required” is counted as a serious violation. Employees of Pang Donglai are restricted from engaging in various conflicts with others; regardless of the insult or bullying they face, they must wear a “sincere and enthusiastic” standard smile, swallow all bitterness and grievances, or else the shadows of “disagreement or non-compliance with the company’s culture,” which are hard to speak of, and the serious disciplinary consequences leading to unemployment will overshadow them.Below serious violations are more severe disciplinary measures: in the first violation within a year, the employee will be deducted 50 points, and their bonus and performance will be halved; a second violation of any clause will escalate to a serious violation. “Arriving at work, working overtime, holding various activities, meetings, etc., without prior leave from superiors” are considered more severe violations, and even refusing overtime, a legitimate action, must be approved by leave. If employees show any dissatisfaction, it is regarded as “bringing emotions to work, lax discipline, low work efficiency, doing unrelated work.” The so-called “Injustice Award” that made Pang Donglai famous is merely an empty check that cannot be cashed because, at Pang Donglai, employees have no right to complain. Regarding daily work, Pang Donglai also enforces strict detailed regulations; violations result in deductions of performance points ranging from 5 to 50, which translate into wages of 50 to 800 yuan. When Pang Donglai touts its salary and benefits, these amounts include bonuses, so these deductions are essentially fines on workers. “Serfs worked for landlords and were punished by landlords. Workers work for capitalists and are punished by capitalists. The only difference is that, in the past, the unfree were beaten with sticks, and now they are whipped with ruble whips.”[15] After being turned into zombies standing at their posts, employees still must beg their boss for the right to continue working and receive full wages.
Beyond these regulations, Pang Donglai has also established a special disciplinary system for service violations. “When customers inquire or have needs, employees must promptly put down their work and attend to customers; do not ignore or fail to answer customer questions; answer patiently and carefully,” “do not fail to greet customers politely, do not ignore customers, and apologize when necessary,” “properly guide customer consumption,” “when customers pay, smile, greet proactively, remind to show membership cards, hand the card back with both hands after swiping, handle products gently during scanning, and pack carefully,” “use negative phrases such as ‘don’t touch,’ ‘don’t dirty,’ ‘do you want it,’ ‘very expensive,’ ‘don’t pick,’ ‘don’t know,’ ‘not my business,’ ‘sold out,’ ‘no more,’ etc., when taking, handing, displaying, or introducing products,” and so on, countless violations. According to internal sources, Pang Donglai has no internal verification mechanism for customer complaints; if a complaint occurs three times, the employee will be immediately fired. Since the authenticity of complaints cannot be verified, the well-known “Injustice Award” becomes just an empty promise. Meanwhile, when sales decline, Pang Donglai fabricates complaints to frame workers with “groundless” charges and dismisses them for serious violations without compensation. Workers are “struck down from the sky,” with no way to defend themselves. So far, all labor dispute cases involving employee dismissals at Pang Donglai have been won. Employees not only lose their dignity at work but also receive no legal compensation after dismissal. Yu Donglai, who claims to uphold kindness and sincerity, is ruthless when it comes to reporting employees—what a “people’s entrepreneur” who “brings happiness and joy”!
Let’s take another look at what status Pang Donglai employees can attain after working diligently for the company: On February 15, 2024, a video circulated online: an employee of Pang Donglai used chopsticks to pick out a noodle from a bucket and tasted it, then continued stirring noodles in the pot with the same chopsticks. This behavior sparked public doubts about Pang Donglai’s food safety. Subsequently, Pang Donglai issued a statement saying the employee’s tasting was during the production of the day’s employee meal of Zhajiang noodles, and the employee did not follow tasting standards. Based on the company’s food safety regulations, the employee’s labor contract was terminated, and the hotpot stall was shut down, with the relevant supervisor demoted for three months. The act of firing an employee just because they forgot to change chopsticks during tasting sharply contrasts with Pang Donglai’s usual promotion of caring for employees, causing public outrage. Under pressure, Pang Donglai was forced to release a 13-page investigation report on the night of February 19, revisiting the incident, claiming that after extensive investigation and democratic discussion, the decision to dismiss the employee was revoked, replaced by “employee’s three-month probation, transfer to a non-food processing position; the supervisor’s original decision remains, hotpot stall remains closed.” After this, Pang Donglai once again gained a halo of “listening to public opinion and being responsible for food safety.” Behind this detailed investigation report, the involved employee was taken to a small office for two days of questioning—one day lasting 12 hours—and subjected to interrogation-like repeated questioning. After such torment, when the media interviewed the employee, they broke into tears, choking out: “I’ve brought shame to my department!” All the slander, insults, and humiliation, as well as the imprisonment and interrogation, vanished amid the praise of Yu Donglai’s “employee-boss as family.” Look at this: such a company that restricts personal freedom and intimidates employees cannot possibly be called a “socialist enterprise,” is it?
In summary, Pang Donglai is a thoroughly capitalist enterprise, whose purpose is to extract surplus value from workers, and Yu Donglai, as its personified symbol, is naturally a vulgar, despicable, and shameless capitalist. Most of Pang Donglai’s employees are women, and within the “family culture” of Pang Donglai, they are nominally Yu Donglai’s family members but in essence “servants of a single household.” “From the day of its founding, Yu Donglai’s interest in being a ‘patriarch’ far exceeded that of being a ‘boss’.”[16] As early as the founding of Pang Donglai, Yu Donglai ordered employees to live in the supermarket and restricted their travel; female employees could only return home during festivals, and when they did, they had to “hand over money and benefits to their families under his leadership.” After intense exploitation, female employees, under the joint plunder of their families and Yu Donglai, could not even retain their basic labor earnings, ending up with nothing. In the current regulations of Pang Donglai, “not respecting both parents and causing complaints, confirmed after investigation,” is considered a more serious violation. As a company with only an economic employment relationship with employees, Pang Donglai shamelessly meddles in employees’ family affairs. After work, employees still have to obey the company’s will, obediently serving their “masters” at home just as at work. “Just obey, and don’t have any rebellious thoughts!” Yu Donglai uses the three cardinal virtues and five constant virtues to bend their spines, eager to carve “obedience” into their DNA. In this “big family” of Pang Donglai, Yu Donglai holds all power, while female employees are degraded, enslaved, and turned into his lustful slaves. The new recruitment requirements for cashiers are women under 22, and even cleaners are required to be under 25. Nominally recruitment, but in fact, they are “beauty queens” for Yu Donglai’s selection. After gaining fame, Yu Donglai dismissed many aging employees and recruited a large number of young, beautiful new employees. At work, Yu Donglai often engages in obscene behaviors such as kissing and hugging employees under the guise of “building rapport,” and frequently mentions “companionship” in his speech. The true meaning of his “love and freedom” has been best illustrated by his own past behavior: Yu Donglai once posted a nude photo with only his lower body masked on the official website of Pang Donglai, with the caption: “Keep yourself in a state of individuality, freedom, and kindness.” The “freedom” he loves is the freedom to exploit and enslave others, the freedom for clients to vent their bestial desires on prostitutes. The freedom employees have is only the freedom to endure, to give up dignity, and to become slaves at the mercy of others.
“Slaves in Rome are chained; workers are bound by invisible strings in the hands of their owners.”[17] Pang Donglai’s employees are bound by countless rules and regulations, suffering through endless trivialities. Under the daily threats of unemployment and discipline, they embed the word “obedience” into their bones, bowing their heads to dust. After tossing and turning in exhaustion at night, they must put on a standard, enthusiastic, tireless-looking smile the next day, respectfully satisfying all customer demands, adding a bright red badge of honor to Pang Donglai’s daily sales. Yu Donglai claims his enterprise is centered on “people,” but what he truly needs is not people but service machines that can endlessly tolerate customers, always wear a standard smile, and provide attentive service.
“In bourgeois society, capital has independence and personality, but active individuals have neither independence nor personality.”[18] Under the banner of high wages and benefits, Pang Donglai recruits widely, using strict systems to select a loyal slave army, maintaining Yu Donglai—the only “independent and individual” dictator in Pang Donglai—his business empire. Behind Yu Donglai’s love-and-freedom facade are countless service slaves with hollow eyes and numb expressions. His “cultural pursuits and the search for ways to live freely and with dignity” are realized through the sacrifice of countless workers’ freedom and dignity. While still exploiting employees to the fullest, Yu Donglai has become a target of envy among countless capitalists, and a “spiritual mentor” sought after within the industry. Many capitalists suffering from employee resistance request Yu Donglai to “preach and teach,” and Xiaomi founder Lei Jun even calls visiting Pang Donglai a “pilgrimage.” Naturally, Yu Donglai is willing to share his “success” with his “class brothers.” As early as 2000, Yu Donglai and Pang Xiaowei jointly initiated the founding of the United Business Donglai Research Institute, with Pang Xiaowei as director and Yu Donglai as chief mentor. In December 2021, Yu Donglai held a private “Donglai Business Philosophy” seminar, attended by retail company chairmen, general managers, and senior executives from across the country. Seeing profit potential, in March 2022, Pang Xiaowei and Yu Donglai jointly established the Donglai Research Institute. The institute launched seed classes, the first and second CEO classes. The seed class, personally guided by Yu Donglai, costs 500,000 yuan per company, with 12 students per session, and applicants must pass multiple reviews. The CEO classes cost 30,000 yuan for the first session and 100,000 yuan for the second, with 100 slots[19]. Playing the role of a noble missionary, Yu Donglai tirelessly teaches exploiting, enslaving, and numbing workers to fellow capitalists, boasting about his “glorious deeds” of taming employees into obedient servants. All capitalists trained by Yu Donglai praise his superb counter-revolutionary tricks, and the continuous admiration fills his spirit and wealth. Yu Donglai happily believes he has spread the seeds of “love and freedom” nationwide. However, most of the capitalists who participate in his training, unable to monopolize procurement channels like Pang Donglai, over-invest in decoration and marketing, and due to surplus goods and circulation difficulties under capitalism, end up losing money—many even turning profits into losses. At this point, their savior “Brother Donglai” appears to assist with “overhaul,” injecting large quantities of cheap self-operated goods to gain dominance over their enterprises. Behind Yu Donglai’s hypocritical veneer, we can only see a bloodthirsty monster with a blue face, devouring employees’ bones.
The Busybody of Middle Repair
Yu Donglai’s success also holds extraordinary significance for middle repair. As early as 1996, Yu Donglai and his brother took a train to Beijing, donated 20,000 yuan to the national defense industry sector of middle repair to build an aircraft carrier, and presented their “declaration of allegiance.” CCTV specially interviewed them, filming and broadcasting a documentary titled “The Story of the Three Brothers.” In 2003, during SARS, Yu Donglai donated 8 million yuan; during the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, he donated 10 million; and during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he donated 50 million to the Wuhan Red Cross. “Conscientious entrepreneur” Yu Donglai humbly kneels before the middle repair government, offering the surplus value he extracted from countless workers to help maintain his hypocritical mask in the face of natural and man-made disasters, continuing to deceive the masses. As for the “explosive popularity” of Pang Donglai, middle repair is pleased not only because Yu Donglai is a loyal dog, but also because the seemingly perfect Pang Donglai is a good tool for their facade. The vulgar economists of middle repair claim that Pang Donglai’s success is due to a sound distribution system that stimulates employee enthusiasm; thus, solving distribution issues can eliminate all social injustices, and the struggle between capitalists and workers can be seamlessly resolved. They believe that the capitalist system will not collapse due to internal contradictions, and class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat can be harmonized within Pang Donglai’s “love and freedom” corporate faith. In today’s context of increasingly severe oppression of workers, intensifying worker resistance, and the faltering fascist rule, middle repair needs Pang Donglai as a “divine enterprise,” and China must have a “divine enterprise” like Pang Donglai and a “people’s entrepreneur” like Yu Donglai to forge a “socialist market economy”—a gilded plaque—to blind the working people and hide the reality of class struggle. Without “Pang Donglai,” middle repair would produce “Thin Donglai,” and without “Yu Donglai,” they would produce “Xi Donglai.” They think that simply adding “people” before “capitalist” or dressing up lies with more refined words can replace Marxism with revisionism, and reform with revolution; attaching “socialism” to “market economy” and decorating “socialism” before “market economy” allows capitalism to masquerade as socialism, and lies to find a market.
The “myth” of Pang Donglai is so popular not only because of bourgeois deception and inversion of black and white but also because of support and praise from many petty-bourgeois. They are detached from labor, practice, and the masses, living in their tiny worlds. They have never worked as service workers at Pang Donglai, nor entered any enterprise as service workers, unaware of what labor truly is, and do not understand that pies do not fall from the sky. They cannot see the bloody facts and instead speak for the bloodsucking vampires who exploit the people. If any of them had ever been lowly beasts they despise or bottom-level service workers exhausted to death, they would not believe Pang Donglai’s lies nor praise it as a “divine enterprise.” They harbor illusions of reform for personal gain, blindly trusting capitalists who spread reform lies. Standing from a detached position from labor, practice, and the masses, they can never see the reality clearly. They prefer to believe in capitalists who eat human flesh and drink human blood than trust ordinary workers who cry tears of blood and sweat. Yet, these smiling bourgeois continuously swallow up petty bourgeois and push them into the ranks of the proletariat they disdain.
“It’s absurd; in the end, it’s just making wedding dresses for others!”[20] Under the countless praises of petty-bourgeois closed ears, bourgeois treachery has spread widely, causing endless harm. According to an employee of a Pang Donglai-turned-Shopping Mall Supermarket, before the overhaul, the supermarket had very few customers; working there was “not that there was nothing to do for a day, but for a month,” and he could even play games freely to pass the time. After the overhaul, his salary rose from 3,800 yuan to 5,000 yuan, and the daily sales and customer flow hit record highs, with workload severely saturated. Meanwhile, they all received training in Pang Donglai’s service management: service standards, fire safety, image management… They were all shackled by the “Pang Donglai model.” Many employees could not bear it and chose to leave, while those who stayed, under the carrot-and-stick tactics, became loyal slaves who actively shared work, paid attention to store evaluations, and worried about store development plans.[21] As a result, more and more capitalists adopted the “Pang Donglai” model, following the path of Pang Donglai—establishing strict rules, paying wages slightly above local average, and using a large reserve army of workers to enslave them… Workers’ conditions worsened, and their shackles grew heavier. The clear lies behind Pang Donglai’s “love and freedom” mask are only lies and enslavement!
Above, we have analyzed the true face behind Pang Donglai’s lies and the reasons for its maintenance. The true nature behind “love and freedom” fully demonstrates that the bourgeoisie’s nature will never change. No matter how hypocritical they appear in words, all capitalists live off exploitation, and the entire capitalist society is built on the system of wage labor exploiting the proletariat. In the face of this reality, all the false socialism claiming class harmony and praising Pang Donglai as a “socialist enterprise” is particularly laughable. Do not let bourgeois reformism’s clouds blind your eyes; to end all suffering, only by thoroughly overthrowing the capitalist system that turns hundreds of millions of workers into wage slaves and seizing power into the hands of the workers can this be achieved. The bourgeoisie and their lackeys like Pang Donglai want to deceive workers with unrealistic promises. They say, “Apart from power, we can give you any benefits.” The awakened proletariat should answer: “Apart from power, everything is an illusion!” “This is the final fight; unite and march toward tomorrow!” Neither Pang Donglai’s sweet words nor the false socialist banners of middle repair can stop our revolutionary march.
“Lose illusions, prepare for struggle!”[22]
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Tencent News: “Employees don’t want to go to work, leave requests are not approved or denied,” says the founder of Pang Donglai, management has achieved 190 days of vacation, senior executives have cars worth over 3 million! https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20231202A03FV500. ↑
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Netease Subscription: “Pang Donglai redefines overtime: Overtime is unacceptable, immoral, and shameful behavior!” https://www.163.com/dy/article/I16TG6F70552RR09.html. ↑
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Pengpai News: “Yu Donglai: Cancer is old news, earning 140 million is news” https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_27796834. ↑
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Pengpai News: “Well-known company announces: Employees are too tired, leave 3 hours early!” https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_25833469. ↑
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On June 27, 2024, Pang Donglai Commercial Group released a report on “Poor Hygiene Environment of Nianxiang Pang Donglai Catering Merchants’ Noodle Skin Processing Plant.” ↑
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Excerpted from Zhihu reply with 35,000 likes. ↑
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Marx: “Capital” Volume III, People’s Publishing House, 1975. ↑
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IGA is a supermarket brand operated under franchise. Franchise refers to the franchisor granting the franchisee the right to use its trademarks (including service marks), trade names, products, patents, proprietary technologies, and business models through a franchise agreement; the franchisee, according to the contract, engages in business activities under the franchisor’s unified business model and pays the corresponding fees. Its essence is a syndicate organization, which purchases raw materials at low prices through joint monopoly and sells goods at high prices. Although participants remain independent in production and legally, they have lost independence in business, with their sales and raw material procurement conducted in a unified manner. The syndicate office handles all member business affairs, consolidates all orders, and distributes them to participants within set limits. Business centralization allows the syndicate to sell goods at marked-up prices and buy raw materials at lower prices. ↑
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Sina Finance: “Four-Party Joint Procurement: A New Path for Retail Small Enterprises to Survive” https://finance.sina.com.cn/leadership/mqdgl/20080718/13465107551.shtml. ↑
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Sina Finance: “Business Secrets | Xu Chang Retail Industry under Pang Donglai’s Shadow: Some Shut Down, Some ‘Pang Donglai-ized’” https://finance.sina.cn/2024-05-26/detail-inawqepm4627987.d.html. ↑
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Southern Weekend: “Pang Donglai’s ‘Explosive’ Transformation of Yonghui: A Multi-Win Experiment Under the Spotlight” https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20240606A0003F00. ↑
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Pengpai News: “Behind Pang Donglai’s ‘Assistance’ to Supermarkets: Exporting Private Brands, Both a Supermarket and a Supplier” https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_27485382. ↑
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Sohu News: “Yu Donglai Shares Pang Donglai’s Revenue Sharing Experience” https://www.sohu.com/a/717428957_121123922. ↑
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In 2022, Pang Donglai Commercial Group released the “Pang Donglai Supermarket Salary Policy for All Levels.” ↑
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Lenin: “An Explanation of the Factory Worker Fining Law,” Volume II of “Complete Works of Lenin,” People’s Publishing House, 1965. ↑
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Sina Finance: “How Was Pang Donglai Transformed in Three Months of ‘Revolution’?” https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2024-05-14/doc-inavehcy3704495.shtml. ↑
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Marx: “Capital” Volume I, People’s Publishing House, 1975. ↑
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Marx and Engels: “Communist Manifesto,” Volume I of “Selected Works of Marx and Engels,” People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↑
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Pengpai News: “The Preacher Yu Donglai: Teaching Less Business, Still Happy When Companies Fail” https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_27498825. ↑
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Cao Xueqin: “Dream of the Red Chamber, Chapter One.” ↑
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Sina Tech: “Three Months After Pang Donglai’s Major Transformation, ‘Use-Only’ Cannot Save BBK” https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/roll/2024-08-16/doc-incivvxa5606312.shtml. ↑
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Mao Zedong: “Drop the Illusions and Prepare for Struggle,” Volume IV of “Selected Works of Mao Zedong,” People’s Publishing House, 1967. ↑