拼多多與Temu在中美兩國發展歷程與因應監管框架的政治經濟學分析

Analyzing Developments of Pinduoduo and Temu and Their Coping Responses to the Regulatory Measures of China and U.S. Through a Political Economic Perspective

2015年才成立的拼多多，在數年間已經成為中國市占率第三的電子商務平臺，並在2018年於美國納斯達克證券交易所上市。2023年，拼多多的年度營收成長率趨近90%，而市占率第一與第二的阿里巴巴與京東年度營收成長率皆不到10%，很有可能是受到中國監管單位針對中國大型平臺企業於2020年10月至2023年7月的「集中整改措施」的影響。另一方面，2022年才成立的Temu，僅花費一年的時間就能獲得一個月510萬活躍用戶的數字，且還在持續擴張當中。本文的研究發問為：為什麼中國針對平臺企業的「集中整改措施」對於拼多多此後進平臺企業的影響比較小？相較於Tiktok受到的美國監管單位要求其終止與中國母公司ByteDance的關係的壓力，為什麼Temu尚未受到美國監管單位的關注？而拼多多如何因應中國與美國相關的監管措施？本研究提出三維度的分析框架，從資金結構面向、科技成熟度面向，以及政策環境面向，來剖析拼多多應對中國與美國監管框架的具體措施以及此過程中後進平臺企業如何展現能動性。本文研究發現，拼多多作為後進平臺企業，持續關注中美兩國的監管環境，得以捕捉監管發展的動態，到目前為止也執行了相對成功的因應措施，本文論證拼多多平臺與Temu在資金與股權架構方面的安排及技術成熟度是因應措施相對成功的關鍵。

Pinduoduo was founded in 2015, and it only took a handful of years for the Pinduoduo Platform to become the third largest e-commerce platform in China, and in 2018, Pinduoduo launched an IPO in Nasdaq. In 2023, the growth rate of annual revenues of Pinduoduo achieved almost 90 percent, while the growth rates of the two larger e-commerce platforms, Alibaba and Jindong, were both less than 10 percent. This is likely to be a consequence of China’s strengthened regulatory measures against monopolistic platform enterprises that were taken in October 2020 and July 2023, which was the period that was defined by the regulators as an‘intense regulatory period’. In addition, established in 2022, Temu only took one year to achieve 5.1 million active users per month. The overarching research question of this paper is: Why did the‘intense regulatory measures’impact Pinduoduo less as a market latecomer? Compared to TikTok which has been pressured by the U.S. regulators into terminating the ties with its Beijing-headquartered parent company ByteDance, why has Temu not been under particular scrutiny by the US regulators? How has Pinduoduo coped with the regulations? This research proposes a three-dimensional analytical framework, including: funding structure, technological availability, and policy context to analyze how Pinduoduo has coped with the regulatory frameworks of China and U.S., as well as to flesh out the corporate agency of Pinduoduo as a latecomer platform business. This paper argues that Pinduoduo has a good grasp of the dynamic regulatory contexts of China and U.S., and it has implemented relatively successful coping measures, the tailored corporate and shareholding arrangements, as well as the technological maturity of Pinduoduo Platform and Temu are key to this relative success.