Market Grabs and Regulatory Jabs: Looking Back on China-Founded E-Commerce in 2024

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Low-cost e-commerce platforms continue to pose a real threat to legacy brands and retailers. In 2024, companies like Shein, Temu, AliExpress and TikTok Shop only kept up the quest to entice customers—and it’s working.

In these platforms’ earlier days, some executives inside legacy companies thought their consumers weren’t shopping on low-cost e-commerce apps. That hope has started to crumble as consumers of varying socioeconomic statuses, ages and other demographic factors flock to those platforms.

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But as these platforms grow, so too do their critics. Governments around the world have condemned China-founded e-commerce’s influence on their economies; consumers and some governments have taken issue with their privacy procedures and more.

Nonetheless, 2024 proved a time for platforms like these to increase their market share, while also buckling down for regulations that could change their business models in multiple jurisdictions, but particularly in the United States.

Here’s a look back at the state of China-founded e-commerce in 2024—and a peek at what could be coming.

Regulatory runarounds

For certain, one of the most prevalent happenings in the low-cost, China-founded e-commerce space has been regulatory infractions and changes.

Temu, Shein and AliExpress have each seen scrutiny from the South Korean government for higher-than-legal levels of toxins in their products; TikTok has faced regulatory questions after being named a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA); Temu has been banned in Indonesia; Shein and Temu got suspended from Vietnam for lack of registration and so much more.

And while those issues continue to impact the low-cost platforms’ business models in new and emerging markets, a trade regulation in the United States could be the most monumental change for their businesses yet.

The biggest regulatory uncertainty hanging over low-cost e-commerce platforms remains de minimis, which allows goods valued at less than $800 to enter the United States with less scrutiny than other, higher-value shipments. But U.S. regulators from both sides of the aisle—including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—have expressed an interest in changing or shuttering what many call the de minimis “loophole” to curtail the effects of China-founded e-commerce platforms on consumers.