拼多多黄峥回应「商家维权风波」：冻结资金100%赔付给消费者（界面新闻）

Responding to the Merchant Protests: Frozen Funds Go 100% to Consumers (Jiemian)

> By Colin Huang · 2018-06-18 · [Original link](https://www.jiemian.com/article/2239047.html) (Chinese)
> Only Colin Huang's own answers; lines marked (Q) summarize the question and are not the interviewer's wording.
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

**(Q)** Where did the frozen merchant funds go?

We guarantee this money is paid 100% to consumers. The whole chain of funds runs from merchants to consumers. The "pay ten for one fake" policy is an improvement made on the basis of traditional e-commerce platforms.

The problem of counterfeits has always plagued early e-commerce platforms. When we started Pinduoduo we also considered this problem, so we set the rules above and pushed them forward. At the time merchants also had doubts; they felt that it was a new platform and didn't understand why the rules were so strict. The whole set of rules was pushed forward and improved bit by bit, and now we feel it more deeply.

The rules were set fairly firmly early on. Merchants who wanted to make one killing and leave stopped short when they saw rules like these. Of course some cases also went to the judicial level, including the chain of funds paid to consumers: every order, every payment, is clearly shown in the judicial system. There are now many cases publicly decided, and our legal team will also show everyone fully. Pick any merchant at random and we can find out on the spot where the money went.

All fines apply to a batch of goods. This falls within the scope of the law. China's counterfeit problem is a deep-seated social problem. Suppose you penalize a single item: a face mask sells 10,000 orders, 5 consumers come to complain, and it won't pay out much money. This would lead to bad money driving out good.

The penalty funds are not in the Pinduoduo company but are held in a supervised account, and we don't enjoy the interest either. This money was all paid to consumers as compensation, which is what allowed us to win the lawsuits. Since Pinduoduo has no Alipay, all compensation is issued in the form of cash coupons for consumers; the validity period of the coupons is 50 years, and currently the usage rate of the cash coupons is as high as 95%.

**(Q)** What do you make of the recent pornographic and violent goods?

Our attitude is very clear-cut. The platform should firmly ban any goods that violate laws and regulations, and should cooperate with the police to actively push and crack down on such goods. After the incident we also went looking for all kinds of pornography-related goods; now, within our search range, they certainly can't be found, but such goods are a very small proportion.

This involves some specialist knowledge: which goods are pornography-related or illegal, I myself can't fully judge, and I need to push the team to improve the database. For us there's no dilemma or controversy about this.

**(Q)** Is merchant onboarding looser than on other platforms?

If you complete the process and click submit, but don't do the store's real-name review, ordinary consumers can't see it at all.

The onboarding rules of each platform themselves aren't very different. To maintain the order of the whole platform, we firmly stand on the consumer's side. I'm from Hangzhou, and I've seen that many first-generation e-commerce platforms all had the problem that it was hard for consumers to protect their rights. A consumer who buys a counterfeit has to provide all sorts of proof, but the cost for a merchant of selling counterfeits is very low. Our compensation standard is higher than Taobao's, and somewhat stricter too.

**(Q)** How has this storm changed your thinking about the company?

For me myself it was an ideological shock. I didn't expect that a small-scale incident would be amplified by public opinion to this degree. Even my mom phoned to ask me, "Huang Zheng, what's wrong with you?" That's the first time since I started working. At first I was also wondering what on earth was going on. All signs show someone was pushing it from behind, but I still want to think about what problems I myself have. We really have reached a very large volume, reaching many, many people every day.

I feel my own PR communication is a bit like an ostrich, very immature. We should have the duty of communicating with the public.

In the future I hope to take this incident as an opportunity to make the company more transparent. Even if some people want to say bad things, I think in the end ordinary people and the media have a conscience in their hearts. In running the company, we'll move forward more firmly and push platform governance, and hope that besides "more value" we can also achieve "more fun".

What's comforting is that ordinary users haven't changed their choice of us. Pinduoduo reaching its present volume isn't something that could be achieved by a couple of one-cent refund stunts.

To sum up: first, we are now a company of considerable scale and should carry out well the benfen (本分) of a public company [Translator's note: 本分, roughly "one's proper duty", is kept in pinyin]. Second, users spur us to keep on doing what we've been doing, so that bit by bit Pinduoduo can become more interesting.

**(Q)** Will you launch advance compensation?

Pinduoduo has no wallet right now, so for the time being there's no way to do it. We also have to avoid some malicious incidents, for example consumers making malicious rights claims that cause a large outflow of cash. But we're lucky; after all, there's a platform (Taobao) that has been through this.

**(Q)** Big channel distributors want unified prices; what do you think?

The iteration speed of the supply-chain side on the Pinduoduo platform is faster than on other e-commerce platforms. What we want to do is [Translator's note: the original repeats 是事情是 here, an apparent slip], push large amounts of information up to the upstream better, so that more traders do flexible production and a trade economy. From my own observation, Pinduoduo has an enormous opportunity, especially with especially large gains in agricultural products.

In the past, agricultural products were dominated by the industrial model. I studied in the US, where the cornfields stretch as far as the eye can see, and one machine driving across can get it done (planting, harvesting), but in China that's very hard to do. China's most fundamental problem is still the peasant problem; it doesn't have intensive production like the US. Today China's fruit, its transport channels are no different from those for shipping teacups, and the losses are very large.

Pinduoduo was able to take off precisely because of fruit, gathering a very large volume in a short time. Picking three months early, ripening artificially; using the group-buying model solved the problem of many-to-many and of land that is relatively scattered and can't support intensive production. Traffic is by nature dispersed, so there must be a transformation in circulation.

**(Q)** Does brand price control exist?

Brand price control is illegal in the US, and China has also introduced the Anti-Monopoly Law, but it lacks laws on consumer class-action lawsuits. What we advocate is reasonable, lawful competition within the scope of the rules. We also communicate with merchants to make information flow more smoothly.

**(Q)** Who matters more, merchants or consumers?

We serve consumers through merchants, but consumers come first; the ultimate interest of merchants lies with consumers. On this point we are very clear.

**(Q)** Merchants complain of little exposure; is the Xiaomi brand's exposure an exception?

We just build the platform and set up the rules. Of course, some merchants on the platform are very well known to consumers. In technology, Pinduoduo hopes to have some warmth and achieve interaction between people, but it's still at an early stage. It's like we want to build a Disneyland, but so far we've only built a few merry-go-rounds.

**(Q)** What do you make of Google taking a stake in JD?

On the one hand it shows China's e-commerce leads worldwide; on the other hand it means Amazon has given Google a sense of crisis.

Taobao and JD are search-engine e-commerce. As Amazon's volume of data keeps increasing, Google hopes users will search for more goods through it rather than searching on Amazon.

Pinduoduo has always wanted to be the e-commerce version of Facebook, with more warmth and fun; at present we're at the "more value" stage. Facebook and Google are parallel, while Amazon has taken away the head searches with the most commercial value. Search-oriented e-commerce will realize Pinduoduo is a different species: on an open field, it has pioneered a different road, which is bound to make competitors uncomfortable. This is Google's state of mind today: search itself has taken a blow, and it will feel very painful.

**(Q)** What is Pinduoduo's profit model?

There's an advertising system, the same as Tmall and Taobao. Our advertising is more like Facebook's in-feed ads.

E-commerce is a business very close to money. We charge a fee of six per thousand, which we have to pay to third-party payment companies; this is a very large cost.

**(Q)** Is the 24-hour shipping rule too strict?

The absolute number of merchant disputes has risen slightly, but as a proportion it is falling extremely fast. The speed and the allocation of traffic are getting stronger and stronger; we won't wait until the warehouses burst before acting.

**(Q)** Will you divide by high-end goods like Tmall in the future?

I think we'll create different scenarios, just converging toward Tmall in the search model. Pinduoduo was able to grow through innovation; we must make real, solid innovations in interaction models and supply-chain models.

Copyright: © LookMinds. Our own edited text and translation, not a substitute for the original; rights in the original belong to the author and the platform. Please see the original link.