On the eve of the Spring Festival, municipal regulatory authorities in many places across the country issued compliance guidelines for Spring Festival food delivery, warning relevant food delivery platforms to compete rationally. Among them, Xinyang City in Henan Province, Nanyang City, Bengbu City in Anhui Province, Shantou City in Guangdong Province, Wenchang City in Hainan Province, Liaoyang City in Liaoning Province and other places require that food delivery platforms immediately stop the "involvement" vicious competition of low quality and low price, and are not allowed to organize vicious subsidies and low-price dumping to ensure the stability of the Spring Festival food delivery market.
On February 6, the Xinyang Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued a reminder and warning on takeout during the Spring Festival, in which prominent issues such as "takeout involution" and "price war" were highlighted in the warning. For example, the warning letter pointed out that practices such as continuing to increase subsidy investment and using low-price dumping as the core strategy not only deviate from the country's policy guidance on the "standardized, healthy and sustainable development" of the platform economy, but also seriously squeeze the living space of small and medium-sized merchants and disrupt the industry ecology.
The Nanyang Municipal Market Supervision Department requires that unfair means such as "choose-one", data monopoly, big data manipulation, and technical blocking are not allowed to restrict competition, and that no one is allowed to organize or participate in behaviors that disrupt market order, such as vicious subsidies and low-price dumping for the purpose of squeezing out competitors.
Xinyang Market Supervision issued a Spring Festival takeout reminder and warning.
The market supervision departments of Xinyang City, Bengbu City and other places have made clear requirements to put an end to "involution" vicious competition. Platforms should abandon the extensive competition model of "fighting for subsidies, fighting prices, and controlling traffic". They should not use continuous subsidies to take "share growth" as the highest strategic goal. The industry should transform from "capital consumption" to "value creation" and build a market order of high quality, good price, and healthy competition.
Bengbu Market Supervision Bureau issued compliance guidelines for Spring Festival takeaways.
In addition, the regulation of promotional behavior has also been focused on. Municipal supervision departments in many places have clearly stated that "it is strictly prohibited to force or covertly force operators on the platform to participate in promotional activities. Merchants must not be forced to participate in platform activities by lowering search rankings, setting unreasonable thresholds or exerting implicit pressure. Service agreements, transaction rules, technical means, etc. must not be used to unreasonably restrict merchants' price behavior."
The Paper noted that some regional catering industry associations also issued a document before the Spring Festival, calling for strengthening industry self-discipline and stopping the "involution" competition of low quality and low price. On February 10, the Gansu Catering and Cooking Industry Association mentioned in an initiative that the subsidy war in the takeout market in 2025 will transform the original quality competition and service competition into a competition for capital tolerance, resulting in the damage to the independent pricing rights of small and medium-sized merchants, weakening their bargaining power, and squeezing the profit margins of the offline real economy. The association called for rectification of "involvement" industry competition and stabilization of the order of the catering market.
The Gansu Provincial Catering and Cooking Industry Association issued a takeaway competition proposal before the Spring Festival.
From the perspective of policy background, the negative effects caused by "involvement" competition have attracted great attention from regulatory authorities. The Central Economic Work Conference made "deeply rectifying 'involution' competition" a key task in economic work; "Qiushi" published a review article on "deeply rectifying 'involution' competition", clearly stating that "some platforms have fallen into the abnormal development logic of 'scale takes precedence over profitability' and use a large amount of financing for price subsidies rather than technology research and development, resulting in intensified 'involution' competition."
Specific to the food delivery industry, the policy signal of “anti-involution” has been very clear. An interview with a food delivery platform regarding the "subsidy war" for food delivery was listed by the State Administration for Market Regulation as one of the top ten typical cases of comprehensive rectification of "involutionary" competition in 2025. The State Administration for Market Regulation interviewed food delivery platforms twice in May and July 2025, requiring the platforms to fully understand the negative effects of low-price and disorderly competition, compete fairly, orderly and rationally, and promote the establishment of a win-win industry ecosystem for all parties.
Entering 2026, the Office of the Anti-Monopoly and Anti-Unfair Competition Commission of the State Council announced on January 9 that it would conduct an investigation and assessment of the market competition situation in the food delivery platform service industry, and address prominent issues such as subsidy competition, price competition, and traffic control.
As the Spring Festival approaches, market regulatory authorities across the country collectively issued a document to carry out preventive supervision of low-priced takeaways. This will help promptly identify risks, guide compliance, build consensus, continue to consolidate a market environment of fair competition, and maintain market order and stability during the Spring Festival.
