Faced with Temu and Chinese ultradiscount, the major economies of Southeast Asia are mobilizing

A package from the Chinese platform Temu, in Athens, September 3, 2024. NIKOS PEKIARIDIS / NURPHOTO VIA AFP Temu, the online bazaar for ultradiscount Chinese products, meets resistance in the major economies of Southeast Asia like Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, whose authorities are taking measures one after the other to limit its progress. The Chinese platform, the second most popular in the world behind Amazon in number of visits, is currently in the crosshairs of the European Union (EU), which opened an investigation on October 31 for non-compliance of one party products sold there. Brussels is also considering lifting the tax exemption for products from outside the EU with a value of less than 150 euros. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers Why the European Commission is opening an investigation against Temu, a Chinese online commerce platform Read later In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), made up of ten members, which does not is not a customs union but has signed free trade agreements with China, Temu and some of its Chinese competitors like TikTok Shop (selling products on TikTok through video clips) and Shein, the fast-food site fashion, are accused of providing unfair competition to small local producers. They also undermine the positions of other major Asian e-commerce players, dominated by the Indonesian giants Tokopedia and the Singaporean giants Shopee and Lazada, three of the six “unicorns” (a company whose value exceeds a billion dollars, or 923 million euros at current prices) of the region in the field of high technologies. Temu had barely made its debut in Vietnam at the beginning of October, with big discounts and free deliveries, when the platform was ordered to report itself to the authorities and consumers were warned of the proliferation of unregulated products. . National regulators have also threatened anti-dumping retaliation. Unfair competition E-commerce is booming in Vietnam, with monthly sales of nearly $1 billion since the start of 2024, dominated by Shopee, number one in Southeast Asia with 71% market share in this region. country, and for the rest, by the Chinese TikTok Shop and Lazada, partly owned by the Chinese Alibaba. Local producers quoted by the local press now complain of suffering unfair competition from their Chinese counterparts. Temu puts consumers in direct contact with factories in China and thus bypasses all the intermediaries in Vietnam. However, the latter records a trade deficit of more than 45 billion euros with China, expected to grow further in 2024. You have 51.49% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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