In Depth: China’s E-Commerce Giants Launch Multibillion-Dollar Blitz to Deliver the Future

China’s e-commerce landscape in 2025 is undergoing a dramatic transformation as industry boundaries blur and traditional market leaders face new, aggressive competition. The clear silos that once segmented online shopping, food delivery, and travel booking have faded, leading to a full-scale battle for market share where companies are encroaching on each other’s previously exclusive domains. This intensified competition has been fueled by staggering subsidies, as the sector’s big players—Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan—jockey for supremacy in what has become an expensive contest over the future of digital commerce in China [para. 1][para. 2][para. 3].

At the heart of this upheaval is the rapid ascendance of “instant retail”, a sector characterized by delivery speeds measured in mere minutes—faster than the time it takes to watch a movie. This new standard of convenience is driving a shift from next-day to next-hour delivery, fundamentally altering consumer expectations and triggering a costly scramble for dominance. Industry analysts estimate the instant retail market at 1.5 trillion yuan ($209 billion) today, with China’s Ministry of Commerce forecasting it to exceed 2 trillion yuan by 2030. Major players are betting heavily, both to secure a share of this growth and to use high-frequency services like food delivery to help cross-sell higher-margin products and services [para. 4][para. 5][para. 6].

The competition escalated notably when JD.com aggressively entered the food delivery market, surpassing 25 million daily delivery orders by June 2025—a direct challenge to Meituan’s dominance. In response, Meituan and Alibaba increased their own subsidies and expanded instant retail operations, making this segment the most fiercely contested battleground in the sector. Meituan quickly countered JD.com by slashing prices on electronics during the annual “618” shopping festival, seeing digital product sales jump nearly sixfold year-on-year. Alibaba joined in with a massive 50-billion-yuan subsidy to grow its instant retail platform, pushing combined peak daily orders among the three giants past 220 million, double the start-of-year figure [para. 7][para. 8][para. 9].

User numbers across all platforms are rising dramatically as a result of these moves. JD.com’s monthly active users grew 14% to 637 million; Meituan’s rose 10% to 511 million; and Alibaba’s Taobao and Ele.me saw usage up 5% and 9% respectively [para. 10]. However, this growth is incredibly costly. In Q2 2025 alone, the top three firms burned through a combined 25 billion yuan in subsidies. JD.com and Alibaba are projected to lose 26 billion and 41 billion yuan respectively on food delivery in the subsequent twelve months, while Meituan’s pre-tax profit could shrink by 25 billion yuan [para. 11].

The turf war is spilling into other sectors. In June 2025, JD.com entered online travel, a market long dominated by Trip.com, by offering zero commission for three years, potentially upending a segment that hasn’t seen such competition in over a decade. While challengers like JD.com hope to gain a foothold, structural advantages held by entrenched players and the fragmented nature of procurement in the hotel industry make this an uphill battle [para. 12][para. 13][para. 14][para. 15].

As online retail growth slows—dropping to just 6.5% in 2024—instant retail emerges as the engine of expansion, projected to grow by 29% in 2025. Meituan leads the instant retail race, leveraging a vast, asset-light warehouse network, but both JD.com and Alibaba are investing heavily to catch up. The outcome remains uncertain: Meituan could maintain dominance, a duopoly could form between Alibaba and Meituan, or JD.com might carve out a more significant share, reshaping the marketplace once again [para. 21][para. 22][para. 23][para. 24][para. 25].