Meituan Founder Wang Xing: There Are No Myths in the World, Only Simple Truths
Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, made a statement included in English business notes: the company has paid many tuition fees to understand that there are no myths in the world, only simple truths—cheap beats expensive, good quality beats poor quality, seriousness beats carelessness, patience beats impatience, diligence beats laziness, and credibility beats lack of credibility.
This principle aligns with his recent public reflections. At the shareholders' meeting in June 2026, he rarely admitted two strategic regrets: entering overseas markets too late and missing the rapid penetration window for food delivery; the community group buying Meituan Preferred failed to cultivate loyalty with light asset fresh food, and non-standard products easily slid into price competition. Chief Financial Officer Chen Shaohui stated that the industry invests about 200 billion yuan in subsidies annually, and the company opposes low-price, low-quality competition.
In the second quarter of 2026, Meituan's revenue was approximately 104.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 14.4%, with core local business operating profit of about 5.7 billion yuan, turning from a loss of about 2 billion yuan in the first quarter to profit. Analysts pointed out that the easing of the subsidy war is related to the retention of high-ticket users. At the same time, he emphasized that the company would not become a "token factory," with the model serving core transactions and efficiency, rather than a computational arms race.
The simple list places price, quality, patience, and credibility on equal footing, but in the reality of the food delivery battlefield, price often moves first, while quality and credibility follow. After regulatory restrictions on disorderly subsidies, competitive rhetoric shifted from burning money to service, aligning again with this list, which does not automatically mean execution is aligned.
Slogans are post-facto summaries, and tuition fees are written in the closed businesses and stock price pressures. At the shareholders' meeting, he took responsibility for the company's poor stock performance over the years.
In market mechanisms, buyers are users who want immediate delivery and low prices, while sellers consist of platforms, delivery riders, and merchants. The driving force is the repricing of market share after the retreat of subsidies. Funds are returning from the subsidy pool to performance and supply chains. Beneficiaries are platforms that can retain frequency at mid-to-high ticket prices, while pressured players are those who only use red envelopes to exchange for order volume.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Wang Xing writes failures as a tuition fee list, with six pairs of opposites being observable behaviors, devoid of mythical patterns. Meituan has evolved from group buying to food delivery, hospitality, and preferred services, with each round inventing new stories, leaving behind a density of performance. The lesson from preferred services is that non-standard fresh food competing solely on price will breach the bottom line; heavy assets are needed to build a supply chain for loyalty. This does not contradict "cheap beats expensive"—if cheap lacks quality, cheapness itself is unsustainable. Entering overseas markets too late is another tuition fee: the window for local life is narrower than for pure software.
The capital path is to use profits from core local business to subsidize new battlegrounds while declaring not to become a token factory, avoiding burning cash into indistinguishable computational power. A network of 340 million daily orders is the real moat; the model is merely a cost-reduction tool. Share buybacks and statements of "serious undervaluation" are casting cash votes for the simple list, rather than for narratives.
Comparative examples include Costco's membership pricing, Toyota's quality and rhythm, and Amazon's commitment to performance as a religion. Meituan's version occurs after subsidies are regulated and halted. The phase shifts from subsidy expansion to a race for quality and credibility, with Keeta profitable in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, while Brazil still requires investment.
This is a reconstruction of the industry chain. The transformation is from food delivery as a traffic commodity to a performance commodity. The mechanism is: red envelopes can buy a single click but cannot buy second-time trust. Price wins the first opening, while credibility determines whether the second opening occurs. Myths die on the loss sheet, while truths live in repurchases.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Myths are used for financing, while truths are used to survive the next round of subsidies.
Cheap can open doors, but credibility lets people come back in.
The simpler the tuition fee list, the more expensive the businesses written into it.