Chinese behemoth Pinduoduo to take on Amazon in US – with even worse labor practices

theguardian.com:

Americans addicted to Amazon could soon be wooed by a Chinese tech giant most of them have never heard of. Pinduoduo is planning to expand its reach to the US next month, according to reports in Bloomberg and Reuters. The company is known for delivering goods at rock-bottom prices – while putting its employees through conditions that a prominent labor activist says should horrify Americans.

Described by its founder, the former Google employee Colin Huang, as a cross between “Costco and Disneyland”, Pinduoduo has ridden a wave of meteoric Chinese tech growth to become one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world since its founding in 2015.

Pinduoduo targeted China’s smaller cities and more rural areas, where consumers tend to be less wealthy and more cost-conscious, says JS Tan, an MIT graduate student who researches the Chinese tech industry. Its signature feature is “group buying”, which allows users to organize people to make mass purchases directly from manufacturers at a steep discount. Because Pinduoduo is heavily integrated with WeChat, China’s top social media platform, it’s a snap for users to gather up friends, family and internet strangers to order big batches of everything from electronics to baby formula to groceries – something that became a lifeline during China’s strict Covid lockdowns.

The company’s model has similarities to Shein, the controversial Chinese ultra-fast-fashion brand that uses tight manufacturing networks to churn out trendy clothes to young western buyers. “Like Shein, Pinduoduo mastered the supply side in terms of delivering products at incredibly cheap and incredibly low cost to customers,” Tan told the Guardian. “I think that’s really going to be part of their strategy in coming to