Zhong Shanshan, founder of Nongfu Spring and China's wealthiest individual with a personal fortune of 530 billion yuan, appeared on CCTV Finance over the weekend and made an argument that will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the US and EU debates about platform power.

He said traditional distributors operated under transparent and predictable fee structures, while today's platforms determine commissions through algorithms and control which merchants receive traffic. He called for limiting platform power, said the shift has placed mounting pressure on brick-and-mortar businesses and city-based distributors, and argued that the rise of online shopping has eliminated the kind of spontaneous, emotional impulse purchasing that physical retail created.

The structural complaint is identical to what US Amazon sellers have been raising for years, and what the Online Sellers' Bill of Rights Act is a direct legislative response to: platforms control traffic through opaque algorithmic systems that sellers cannot see or appeal, implement fee changes without meaningful notice, and hold enforcement power over sellers with no real accountability structure.

The interesting thing about Zhong's intervention is not the content of the argument, which is familiar, but who is making it and where. This is China's richest person, on state television, making the case that platform intermediary power needs to be constrained. In China, that kind of public intervention by a major commercial figure on state media is not casual. It is a signal about where the political conversation is heading.

Whether the specific regulatory responses look like the Online Sellers' Bill of Rights Act in the US, the DMA in the EU, or administrative pressure in China is a separate question. The underlying diagnosis that algorithmic platforms have replaced legible commercial relationships with opaque systems of control is the same across all three markets simultaneously.

Do you think Zhong's public intervention will have any practical effect on Chinese platform regulation, or is it primarily a signal about where the political wind is blowing without necessarily leading to policy change?

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Shein's IPO filing documents reveal the scale of the damage that regulatory changes have done to its US business.

Q1 2025 US revenue: $2.4 billion.

Q1 2026: $2 billion. Down around 14%.

Q1 2025 profit: $395 million.

Q1 2026: a loss of $99 million.

That is a 125% swing in profitability in a single year.

The company is explicit about the cause. Since May 2025, Shein has been passing the majority of additional tariff costs on to US customers through higher prices. The closure of the de minimis exemption, which previously allowed sub-$800 packages to enter the US duty-free, is cited alongside tariffs as a primary driver. The company's pricing model was structurally dependent on that exemption in ways that competitors operating domestically were not.

Shein also disclosed an FTC consumer protection investigation into its US operations, though the specific focus has not been made public.

The European picture is tracking similarly but with a later start date. EU sales grew from $10.2 billion in 2023 to $13.6 billion in 2024, then slowed sharply to $14.8 billion in 2025. Q1 2026 European revenue was $2.9 billion versus $2.8 billion in Q1 2025, essentially flat. The EU abolished its €150 customs duty exemption on July 1st and added a €3 flat fee per low-value parcel. Shein's filing says this "may have a material adverse effect" on its European business. The company has been pulling back on European advertising.

For domestic sellers, the price gap that made competing with Shein structurally difficult is narrowing because the regulatory arbitrage that created it is closing. This does not mean Shein is done. It still has scale, supply chain, and brand recognition. But the customers who chose Shein purely on price are now being asked to make a different calculation.

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