Meituan

Although group-buying has been around in China way before the COVID-19 pandemic, the sector enjoyed renewed popularity thanks to social distancing measures.

Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Meituan have all used variable interest entities to dodge rules on capital activity.

Group-buying businesses have shunned top-tier cities so far.

On average, each of the 500 million users placed 34 orders in 2020.

Meituan has been criticized by regulators in Beijing for monopolistic practices before, notably for exploiting merchants with coercive exclusivity agreements.

The pandemic accelerated tech trends that will continue to dominate daily life in 2021.

New battleground for internet giants threatens small businesses.

The area is the hometown of Chinese unicorns like ByteDance, Xiaomi, Didi, and Meituan.