---
title: "The Call for a New Order"
description: "From a strong to a weak old order, the historical path is never a straight line, always moving through cycles of order and chaos. Today, China's FMCG industry stands at the crossroads of the collapse of the old order and the reconstruction of a new one. Over the past 40 years, a powerful order system was built on an expanding market, but now it is disintegrating. The root cause is the productivity revolution, which has led to severe oversupply. A new order based on 'symbiosis' is emerging, and the 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference will explore this theme."
author: "陈思廷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2024-12-09"
language: "en"
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---

# The Call for a New Order

> From a strong to a weak old order, the historical path is never a straight line, always moving through cycles of order and chaos. Today, China's FMCG industry stands at the crossroads of the collapse of the old order and the reconstruction of a new one. Over the past 40 years, a powerful order system was built on an expanding market, but now it is disintegrating. The root cause is the productivity revolution, which has led to severe oversupply. A new order based on 'symbiosis' is emerging, and the 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference will explore this theme.

From a strong to a weak old order

The path of history is never a straight line; it always advances through cycles of order and chaos. At every historical crossroads, order and chaos, destruction and reconstruction are eternal themes. Clearly, today's China FMCG stands at the crossroads of the 'collapse of the old order' and the 'reconstruction of a new order.'

Over the past 40 years, based on a market that has continuously expanded in capacity, we have built a powerful order system. Brand owners, distributors, retailers—the three largest groups in the FMCG industry and related industries—operated orderly under this powerful order, jointly supporting a market worth tens of trillions and the livelihood of 1.4 billion people. But today, everything once in the name of order is accelerating deconstruction and collapse:

> Channel conflicts are everywhere online and offline, and channel order exists in name only;
>
> Hard discount is growing wildly, from being banned to being tolerated, and product price systems are crumbling;
>
> Inventory pressure leads to overstocking, and cross-region selling is rampant; in the face of survival, no one can stay aloof, and making an example of one has become the law of not punishing the many;
>
> Growth is gone, business is losing money, traditional manufacturer-dealer relationships are collapsing on a large scale, and factory leaders have gone from honored guests to strangers...

The once powerful old order is irreversibly heading toward collapse.

**The productivity revolution is the root cause of the collapse of the old order**

The disappearance of the demographic dividend, slowing income growth, and channel fragmentation are not the underlying causes of today's challenges. Finding this underlying cause is important; only by correctly and deeply understanding the world can we transform or participate in transforming it. From a macro-historical perspective, we believe that the tremendous progress brought by 40 years of productivity development is the underlying cause of all today's problems. The three elements of productivity—labor, means of labor, and objects of labor—have all made exponential progress over the past 40 years. The education and technical level of workers are incomparable to the past; the tools and technology in the means of labor have made per capita efficiency a hundred times or more than in the past; and the globalization of capital and upstream raw materials has brought revolutionary changes to the objects of labor. The revolutionary changes in the three elements of productivity cannot be narrowly understood as only upstream; the circulation and retail levels have also undergone such epoch-making productivity revolutions. China has completed in 40 years the path of productivity evolution that took the Western world 200 years, and thus China's FMCG has prospered for 40 years. But problems have also arisen: whether upstream factories, intermediate channel distributors, or downstream retailers, there is now severe oversupply. **Due to the efficiency revolution brought by major technological progress, 1.4 billion users do not need so many factories, distributors, and retailers.** Productivity progress is irreversible, and the involution brought by oversupply is inevitable. In the coming years, upstream capacity, intermediate circulation, and downstream retail will all eliminate one-third or more in a brutal manner.

The continuously growing market, relative balance between supply and demand, and relative scarcity of good products were the core foundations of the old order. When these foundations are gone, the old order inevitably moves from strong to weak, to collapse.

**Building a new order based on 'symbiosis'**

History always rolls forward; we cannot escape or resist it. We can only change, embrace, and integrate into the new history. The old order collapses, and the new order has not yet been rebuilt, but disorder and chaos are intermediate states, not steady states. The new order will certainly be rebuilt. Productivity determines production relations, and production relations react on productivity. Productivity has changed, and the three major elements of production relations will inevitably undergo earth-shaking changes. The collapse of the old order is the collapse of old production relations no longer matching new productivity. The reconstruction of the new order must also succeed on the basis of new production relations. The transformation of production relations involves fundamental changes in the three elements, from ownership forms to the roles, statuses, and relationships of various subjects, as well as value distribution. It will be a vast and far-reaching transformation movement. In this movement, the 'relationship' in which the various subjects of the FMCG industry are reorganized determines whether the transformation of their production relations can succeed.

In the old order, the essential relationship among brand owners, distributors, and retailers was 'transaction,' with 'game-playing' and 'price' as the eternal core, everything else being beautification. Therefore, today's traditional manufacturer-dealer relationships, supplier-retailer relationships, and even user relationships are continuously dying and collapsing under 'low prices' and 'involution.'

**'New Distribution' believes that in the future, a 'new order' based on a 'symbiotic' relationship will be built among the various subjects in the FMCG industry.** Based on common interests, vision, and even common values, building a 'symbiotic relationship' with consistent behavior, specialized division of labor, close collaboration, shared interests, and shared risks—we believe this will be the cornerstone of the new order in the FMCG industry. China Resources Beer proposed the channel strategy of 'building a community of shared destiny for manufacturers and dealers' this year; Yihai Kerry proposed the plan of 'creating a joint business entity for manufacturers and dealers'; the KA joint organization 'Baotinghui' in the FMCG industry is developing faster and cooperating more closely; regional supply chain joint organizations are also spreading in various places... Based on different understandings of 'symbiosis,' the great transformation of production relations is developing in various forms between manufacturers and dealers, and between suppliers and retailers. These explorations and practices will continuously promote the historical process of rebuilding a new order in the FMCG industry.

**The strength, direction, and hope for rebuilding a new order in FMCG**

The reconstruction of the new order will be a grand historical project for China's FMCG industry. All brand owners, distributors, retailers, and industry service providers with a sense of the future must devote themselves to the torrent of this new order reconstruction. Only in this way can we truly participate and benefit from it. How can China's FMCG get through the bleak chaotic period? Where will the new order emerge? How can we have a place in the new order, or even become the leader in the reconstruction?

To explore and find the strength, direction, and hope for rebuilding a new order in China's FMCG, **from March 17 to 19, 2025**, **'New Distribution' will initiate and host the 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference and the 4th China FMCG Hard Discount Conference & the 4th China FMCG Distributor Conference, with the theme 'New Order · Symbiosis,' in Chengdu, China.** **The conference will focus on the core theme of 'New Order · Symbiosis,' spanning three days, with one main forum, one hard discount conference, one distributor conference, a guest dinner and awards ceremony gathering over a hundred FMCG industry leaders, multiple parallel forums on hot topics, and multiple one-on-one precise matchmaking closed-door meetings.** It will also bring together over a hundred FMCG industry leaders, including brand giants, marketing experts, industry dark horses, economists, overseas expansion leaders, and frontline service providers; multiple roles and incremental channels, regional B2b platforms, excellent distributors, (discount) retail chains, instant retail platforms, chain supermarkets, etc.; and exclusive release of in-depth industry reports, regional B2b, and FMCG industry channel transformation research reports. Help companies find key growth opportunities, provide precise business matchmaking, expand business growth radius, and solidify business product portfolios! Make your trip worthwhile!

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