Pinduoduo Malaysia has made one thing very clear: products that once looked cheap can suddenly look expensive.
RM2.30 for a pair of earphones.
Delivered to your doorstep.
Malaysia Retail Chain Association president Datuk Liew Bin highlighted that example when discussing the pressure local retailers are facing from overseas e-commerce platforms.
According to The Star, a similar pair of earphones could sell for around RM50 in a Malaysian shop but was available through Pinduoduo for just RM2.30, including delivery.
As a consumer, the reaction is obvious.
Why pay RM50 when you can pay RM2.30?
Fair question.
But Malaysian traders are asking another one.
How can the price possibly be that low?
Because in some cases, products on Pinduoduo Malaysia are not simply cheaper than Malaysian retail prices.
Traders say certain products are appearing at prices significantly below what they themselves pay their suppliers.
And that changes the conversation.
Consider what happened to Penang businessman Lee Chuan Wei, who sells Chinese prayer materials.
Lee told The Straits Times that some joss sticks listed through Pinduoduo were selling for half of what he pays his wholesale suppliers.
That difference matters.
A Malaysian trader buys from a supplier first.
He then has to cover transportation, inventory, staff, rent and other operating expenses before making any profit.
Yet a Malaysian consumer may find what appears to be a comparable product shipped directly from China at a retail price significantly below what that trader says he pays his supplier.
Not lower than his retail price.
Lower than his supplier price.
That naturally raises two questions.
How is the Malaysian trader supposed to compete?
And:
How is the overseas seller able to offer it at that price in the first place?
Not every huge price difference is suspicious.
Traditional retail has layers.
A product might travel from:
Factory → exporter → importer → distributor → wholesaler → retailer → customer
Every layer adds costs.
Every business in the chain needs to make something.
Platforms such as Pinduoduo can shorten that chain dramatically by connecting consumers much more directly with manufacturers and sellers in China.
China also has manufacturing advantages that cannot be ignored.
Large production volumes.
Dense supplier networks.
Specialised manufacturing clusters.
Strong logistics infrastructure.
Factories located close to component suppliers.
Intense competition between manufacturers.
Put all of that together and certain products can genuinely be made and sold for prices Malaysian businesses struggle to match.
That is competition.
And a product being extremely cheap does not automatically mean anything illegal is happening.
But when the price gap becomes large enough, traders understandably start asking how the economics work.
This is where the word “dumping” has entered the discussion around Pinduoduo Malaysia.
Some Malaysian traders and business groups suspect that certain ultra-low prices may go beyond normal manufacturing efficiency.
Their concern is straightforward.
Imagine a Malaysian trader buys an item from a supplier for RM10.
That supplier presumably also needs a margin, while someone further up the chain manufactured the product for less.
Then a Malaysian consumer finds what appears to be a comparable finished product online for RM5.
And that RM5 may include international delivery.
The question becomes:
Who is absorbing the difference?
There could be many explanations.
The factory may be producing at a dramatically lower cost.
The overseas seller may have removed multiple layers of distributors.
The seller may be clearing excess inventory.
The platform may be supporting promotions.
The merchant may be willing to sacrifice profit to increase sales.
Shipping costs may be structured differently.
Or the seller may simply be losing money on the transaction.
Without access to the underlying commercial data, nobody should pretend to know which explanation applies to any individual product.
But when traders say the retail price in Malaysia is significantly below what they pay their own suppliers, it is reasonable for them to ask whether something more than ordinary competition is happening.
There is another reason the question deserves attention.
Sellers inside China have also complained about extreme price pressure.
Reuters reported in 2024 that China’s e-commerce sector had become locked in an aggressive price war as major platforms fought for increasingly price-conscious consumers.
An industry participant told Reuters that some merchants could end up selling below cost to maintain favourable search positions during major promotional periods.
Monash University economist He-Ling Shi also told Reuters that some vendors on Pinduoduo had been operating at a loss for two years.
That does not prove products entering Malaysia are being illegally dumped.
It does not prove every Pinduoduo seller is losing money.
And it does not mean every unusually cheap product deserves suspicion.
But it does tell us something important.
Below-cost selling is not unheard of within China’s e-commerce price war.
That makes the concerns surrounding Pinduoduo Malaysia worth examining rather than dismissing simply as complaints from local retailers.
This distinction is important.
In everyday conversation, someone might see an impossibly cheap imported product and call it dumping.
Legally, the test is much more specific.
Under Malaysia’s trade-remedy framework, dumping generally occurs when a product’s export price is lower than its normal value for the same or a comparable product in the exporting country.
That means selling something below what a Malaysian trader pays his supplier does not automatically prove dumping.
Neither does selling below cost.
Authorities would have to examine the specific product, its export price, its normal value and the effect on the Malaysian industry producing comparable goods.
Malaysia already has a legal framework for this through the Countervailing and Anti-Dumping Duties Act 1993.
Anti-dumping action also requires evidence that dumped imports are causing or threatening material injury to the relevant domestic industry.
So the correct conclusion is not:
“Pinduoduo is cheap, therefore Pinduoduo is dumping.”
The proper question is:
Are particular products entering Malaysia at prices that meet the legal definition of dumping, and are those imports harming Malaysian producers?
Those are very different things.
There is another complication.
Pinduoduo is a marketplace.
The platform and the merchants selling through it are not the same thing.
One merchant may be a factory selling directly to consumers.
Another may be clearing excess inventory.
Another may deliberately take a loss on one product to attract customers.
Another may simply have a much lower production cost.
That is why saying “Pinduoduo sells below cost” is too broad.
The more useful question is what individual sellers are doing and how particular products reach such extraordinarily low prices.
A platform itself can also be commercially successful even while some merchants operating on it struggle to make money.
Both situations can exist at the same time.
Malaysia already knows how to investigate dumping.
Traditional cases tend to involve clearly identifiable products.
Steel.
Chemicals.
Industrial materials.
A particular product enters Malaysia from a particular country.
Local manufacturers complain.
Import volumes can be measured.
Prices can be compared.
The exporting country’s normal value can be examined.
Damage to Malaysian manufacturers can then be assessed.
Pinduoduo Malaysia presents a different type of challenge.
Open the platform and you can find:
Phone accessories.
Tools.
Furniture.
Toys.
Clothes.
Kitchen products.
Beauty items.
Electronics.
Home decorations.
Prayer materials.
Thousands upon thousands of products can cross the border through individual consumer orders.
One parcel may be worth RM2.
Another RM8.
Another RM20.
And they may all come from different sellers.
Malaysia’s trade-remedy system is designed around identifiable products and industries.
A giant digital marketplace can potentially bring almost every consumer-product category into the country at once.
That makes enforcement far more complicated.
The government has already tackled one part of the competitive gap.
Since January 1, 2024, qualifying low-value goods sold online from overseas are subject to a 10% sales tax.
Malaysia’s Low Value Goods regime generally covers eligible imported goods sold at RM500 or below.
That reduces one historical advantage enjoyed by overseas online sellers.
But tax does not explain the biggest price gaps.
Take that RM2.30 pair of earphones.
Add 10%.
The price becomes about RM2.53.
If a comparable product sells for around RM50 locally, taxation clearly isn’t the main reason for the difference.
Which takes us back to the original question:
How is the underlying product so cheap?
There is an important point that cannot be ignored.
Cheap products are useful.
Malaysians should not be forced to pay RM50 for something that can genuinely and sustainably be produced and sold for RM5.
Competition also exposes businesses that have survived mainly by importing inexpensive products, adding very large margins and reselling them.
Those businesses may need to change.
Better service.
Local warranties.
Customisation.
Their own brands.
Faster fulfilment.
Better product knowledge.
Or even their own manufacturing capabilities.
If Pinduoduo Malaysia forces some Malaysian businesses to become more competitive, that is not necessarily bad for the economy.
The concern begins when companies are no longer competing against manufacturing efficiency.
They may instead be competing against prices that cannot be sustained commercially over the long term.
That is what regulators need to understand.
There is also a broader economic issue.
Suppose a Malaysian consumer spends RM50 with a business operating here.
Some of that money may pay employees.
Some pays rent.
Some pays delivery companies.
Some pays warehouses.
Some pays accountants, designers, marketers or other service providers.
Some becomes profit.
Some eventually becomes tax.
Those businesses and employees then spend part of the money again.
Of course, many Malaysian retailers also sell imported products, so some of the money ultimately leaves the country anyway.
But more of the commercial activity surrounding the transaction takes place within Malaysia first.
Direct cross-border shopping shortens that chain.
Malaysia still captures some value through taxes, payment services and local last-mile logistics.
So it would be wrong to claim that every ringgit spent through an overseas platform immediately leaves Malaysia.
But fewer Malaysian businesses may participate in the transaction.
One RM5 order means almost nothing.
Millions of orders begin to matter.
This matters because Malaysian MSMEs are not a small side of the economy.
According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, MSMEs generated RM689.8 billion in value added in 2025, representing 39.7% of Malaysia’s GDP.
They also employed around 8.09 million people, or 48.7% of Malaysia’s total employment.
Nearly half of the country’s employment is connected to MSMEs.
That does not mean every Malaysian retailer deserves protection.
It does mean policymakers should understand what happens when more consumer spending moves directly from Malaysian households to overseas sellers without passing through as many Malaysian businesses along the way.
The issue is not simply about keeping shopkeepers happy.
It is about where jobs, margins, investment and future businesses are created.
That would be far too simple.
Pinduoduo gives Malaysians access to huge numbers of products at extremely competitive prices.
Consumers benefit.
Local businesses face stronger competition.
Some unnecessary middlemen may disappear.
All of those things can happen without anything being wrong.
The real question is how the prices are achieved.
There is a major difference between:
“Our factory can genuinely make this for less.”
and:
“We are deliberately losing money on this product.”
And there is another legal difference between both of those and:
“This product is being dumped into a foreign market.”
They are not interchangeable.
That is ultimately why the Pinduoduo Malaysia debate deserves attention.
A Malaysian trader has publicly said some products available through Pinduoduo were selling for around half of what he pays his own suppliers.
Malaysia’s retail industry has highlighted products such as earphones priced around RM2.30 through Pinduoduo versus roughly RM50 locally.
Business groups have raised concerns about extreme price undercutting and the possibility of dumping.
And reporting from China has documented complaints about below-cost selling and merchants enduring sustained losses during the country’s e-commerce price war.
None of that proves Pinduoduo or its sellers have violated Malaysian anti-dumping law.
But it does justify asking how these prices are possible.
Because when an overseas retail price delivered to Malaysia is significantly below what a Malaysian trader says he pays his own supplier, this stops being merely a story about bargain shopping.
It becomes a trade issue.
A competition issue.
And an economic issue.
Malaysians should enjoy cheaper products.
But Malaysia should also understand what sits behind those prices.
Before celebrating the RM2 bargain, there is one simple question worth answering:
How can someone sell it to us for less than what our own traders pay their suppliers?
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