Elephant Diet Vol.4
- Kat
- Nov 21
- 7 min read
Kat’s Dish —
DoorDash Has Become What Meituan Wishes It Could Be(DoorDash活成了美团羡慕的样子)
By 表外表里, a we-media brand focusing on business and finance.
Although the original article analyzes the business trajectories of both delivery platforms using data, a more humanistic reading reveals something deeper: the constraints imposed by two fundamentally different labor markets. It dispels a common misconception — that Meituan and DoorDash are playing the same game. They’re not.
Seemingly, Meituan dwarfs DoorDash in scale and operational efficiency, yet capital markets consistently reward DoorDash with a higher valuation. The reason is simple: the “soil” in which each company grows is born with huge differences.
According to this article, the U.S. delivery market is defined by differentiated, non-overlapping competition. DoorDash built its rise on the suburbs, targeting family households, accepting slower delivery speeds in exchange for higher order values, relying heavily on gig workers to keep costs down, and monetizing through subscriptions and advertising. What DoorDash runs is essentially a high-margin service business.
China’s delivery market, by contrast, is a hard-mode battleground from day one. Dense urban populations, speed-obsessed, price-sensitive consumers, highly variable food formats, and stringent regulatory expectations leave Meituan with no choice but to maintain a massive, fully employed courier workforce to guarantee reliability. In China, food delivery quickly became treated as essential infrastructure rather than a premium service, and thus its margins were destined to be thin.
All of this underscores a key truth: business models aren’t invented out of a founder’s imagination—they’re carved out by a country’s social structure, labor regime, urban fabric, and consumer culture. As the article concludes, DoorDash has become “the version Meituan envies” because it grows in an environment far more suited to building a high-margin delivery business.
Lily’s Dish —
By Vista Hydrogen Business (Vista氢商业), a popular media account known for its young and witty take on consumer brands and the stories behind market trends.
During China’s recent Double Eleven(双十一) shopping festival, the rise of “giant tags” attached to women's apparel sparked discussions. Some clothing tags are large enough to serve as placemats, and some are made from very sturdy material that could even serve as a defense tool. They are often quite eye-catching, prominently featuring phrases like “No return or exchange if removed”.
This phenomenon is a direct response to the persistently high return rates for women’s clothing on nearly all Chinese e-commerce platforms. The root of the issue lies in their widespread consumer protection policies, primarily “7-Day No Reason Return/Refund”, which allows customers to return purchases for no reason within a week, and “Return Shipping Insurance”, an add-on that covers the cost of return shipping, cost always borne by merchants. Initially designed to build consumer confidence by enabling risk-free “try-ons” at home, these policies are exploited by some consumers who buy clothes, wear them for a few days, and then return them. Lots of vendors complained that those items are often returned with stains, such as lipstick or foundation, which make them impossible to resell. Besides, their financial burden is twofold: they lose the sale and also incur significant costs from return shipping insurance payouts. One merchant reported spending over 120,000 RMB (approximately $16,874 USD) on freight insurance refunds alone during last year’s Double Eleven.
Thus, the clothing tag has become a symbol of battle between consumers and vendors. The strategy is to make the tags so large they can’t be easily hidden or ignored, thereby making them less likely to be tried on for public occasions. However, as some manufacturers point out, size alone is no longer enough; the tags have to be “hard to remove”. Some vendors have developed more sophisticated methods, such as tags with unique serial numbers and logos that prevent consumers from removing and replacing them, or even tags embedded with NFC chips that will alert the system if tampered with.
Biyi’s Dish —
By Positive Connections (正面连接), a new-media brand that focuses on non-fiction and feature stories highlighting important yet underreported topics about contemporary China.
Behind the “doxxing” incidents proliferating across the Chinese internet lies an active community of teenagers known as the “Troll System.” (喷系) These youths have built what they call digital “empires”(帝国) on social networks, mobilizing under the banner of “expeditions.” (出征) For them, doxxing and cyberviolence are a game of power—a game that often escalates into real-world consequences, including cross-province harassment, home invasions, and physical assaults. This abuse has also been commodified; they trade the privacy and safety of ordinary netizens for pocket money. One minor reportedly made over 100,000 yuan in just a year and a half.
In July 2023, Positive Connections’ reporter met three such teenagers and the mother of one participant. They fit a common profile: mostly from small towns, having dropped out or suspended their studies early, and adrift in idleness before being drawn into the online world. Their paths then follow a similar downward trajectory—recruited into the “Troll System” through online games, they readily join in cyberbullying, quickly transform into perpetrators, and then lure the next teenager into the fold.
The story of Xiaolong, one of the interviewees:
At 14, Chen Xiaolong was “crowned emperor” online. He commanded an organization called X, overseeing a network of more than 300 QQ groups with tens of thousands of members, including adolescents aged 12 to 18. This community, numbering in the millions, initially competed on forums like Tieba based on typing speed and creativity in hurling insults. By 2018, they had moved to “doxxing.” Emulating gangsters, these teenagers form cliques, replacing fists with verbal abuse and exposing personal information, creating a digital battlefield of “internet hoodlums.”
Xiaolong explains that “troll phrases” must be short and vicious—lengthy or awkward insults mean defeat. He formalized a structure: Verb + Noun + Adjective. He also recommended incorporating dialect, noting: “Using local slang adds a nice touch.” The next step involves creating humiliating photoshops, a common tactic being to superimpose the faces of a victim’s family of five onto pigs, then spamming these images to break the target’s spirit. If resistance persists, the final recourse is “doxxing.”
The process is alarmingly simple, requiring no advanced hacking skills. Through a few basic steps on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, they find channels where entering a target’s online handle automatically returns ID card details, household registration information, and family member information. They compile this data into posters, collaging photos with labels like “rabid dog,” “low-life,” and “despicable,” sometimes including parents’ pictures and bank card numbers. With this information, they launch SMS bombing attacks, using the victim’s phone number to spam-sign up for various services, triggering dozens of verification codes per second for days or even months. These posters often feature “education hotlines”—the phone numbers of the victim’s parents—encouraging others to call and demand they “control their child.”
One autumn morning in 2021, while Xiaolong was still asleep, four police officers stormed into his home and took him to the police station. There, officers showed him his computer screen—his WeChat chat logs, Alipay, and bank transaction records were all laid bare. His parents, after pulling strings, began to grasp the scale of his actions. Before they could fully locate him, Chen was released. His parents confronted him angrily; he recalls them saying, “Stop doing this online. You’re supposed to go into business, open a factory. We can invest.” He ultimately surrendered approximately 120,000 yuan in illicit profits, had his phone confiscated, and received only a warning due to being a minor.
In China, few teenagers truly face consequences for “doxxing.” Although their actions constitute the crime of infringing on citizens’ personal information, they often escape serious punishment—either because the sum involved falls below the threshold for prosecution (one individual made just 800 yuan and received a verbal warning) or because they are minors, making legal accountability extremely difficult.
Joyce’s Dish —
Chinese Seniors Searching for “Outsourced Children”: “I’m Just Tapping into Their Company, Like Tapping into Wi-Fi” (寻找“外包儿女”的老人： “我只是蹭一下他们的陪伴，就像蹭网一样”)
By Beijing Youth Daily In-Depth, a state-linked Chinese media focusing on deep dives.
“Outsourced children” services — where strangers are hired to provide care and companionship for elderly people living alone— are taking off in China, where the population is greying at an alarming rate and tackling loneliness among seniors has become a pressing issue.
As China sees over 310 million people aged 60 or older and more than half of this demographic now living alone — mainly because their kids have jobs far away or they’ve lost their only child — these services are stepping in to offer much-needed emotional support in the rapidly growing elderly care sector.
Beijing Youth Daily In-Depth reported that while there are far more service providers, as in “outsourced children” than the elderly in need posting online, some senior citizens begin seeking these relationships as early as their forties or fifties, often due to their only child living abroad or being single.
Wu Wei, a 53-year-old single woman, is one of the not-yet-old” seniors who actively seek companionship by building relationships with younger individuals — but she’s way ahead of the game.
Wu started this journey about ten years ago, investing in these relationships by hiring young people to provide emotional and practical support. She describes her interactions with them as mutually beneficial, in which she both offers and receives help, creating a bond that evolves from a transactional arrangement into one resembling family ties.
Promising as it seems to be, questions about its emotional sustainability, potential safety, and legal risks pop up.
As companionship becomes a purchasable service, can “outsourced children” truly provide reliable support for the elderly? For seniors seeking these connections, what real and psychological needs are being met? How do they define these relationships?
The emerging industry is yet another nudge for the aging country to navigate its elderly care dilemma.
Hope you enjoyed the November issues of Elephant Diet,
See you in our next story!
The Elephant Room team🐒🐒🐒🐒
（*While the Elephant Room team carefully selects content from credible news outlets and media, we cannot independently verify every piece of information it contains. If you believe any material infringes on copyrights or contains factual errors, feel free to reach out to us so that it can be reviewed and, if necessary, removed🙏）
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