Anti-Involution, just in time!

this year's Report on the Work of the Government, it is clearly proposed that the "involution" competition should be thoroughly rectified. In the ongoing

Two sessions, many delegates have also made speeches on the topic of "involution", such as Li Dongsheng, founder and chairman of TCL, who suggested that photovoltaic "anti-involution" should be promoted by market-oriented means, and Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, called on new energy vehicles to shift from "involution" competition to "connotative development".

This shows that a clear signal has emerged, that is, the "involution" competition can stop. How to eliminate inefficient internal friction and build a unified national market has become the core issue of China's high-quality economic development.

At this key point, Zhu Hongren, Secretary of the Party Committee of the China Enterprise Federation, deeply interpreted President Song Zhiping's masterpiece Anti-Inner Volume.

This is not only a textbook to analyze the plight of the industry, but also a sword to pierce the haze of the inner volume and respond to the call of the national policy. Whether you are an entrepreneur seeking transformation or an observer concerned about the hot spots of the two sessions, I believe you can find the underlying logic and practical plan from "price war" to "value war" in this book.

Author: Zhu Hongren, Secretary

of the Party Committee of China Enterprise Confederation Source: Song Zhiping, Anti-Inner Volume, published by

China Machine Press, China's economy is in an important critical period. Looking ahead, the ship of China's economy has never been as close to the great goal of world power and national rejuvenation as it is now. Looking back, China's economy is moving forward resolutely in overcoming one Rapids and dangerous shoals after another and overcoming the stormy waves again and again.

Faced with the test of the next five or ten years, China's enterprises and entrepreneurs represent the indomitable backbone, as long as they have firm confidence, persist in reform and innovation, constantly overcome difficulties and obstacles in the process of improving the socialist market economic system, accelerate the substantive transformation of new and old kinetic energy, and realize the effective promotion of economic quality. It will certainly be able to push the ship of China's economy to the other side of socialist modernization.

Enter "15 5" period, our country economy is answering a new challenge. In July

2024, the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee first proposed the prevention of "involution" vicious competition, which opened the prelude of anti-involution;

in December of the same year, the Central Economic Work Conference further demanded the comprehensive rectification of "involution" competition;

In addition, the "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Formulation of the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development" adopted by the Fourth Plenary Session of the Twentieth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China also clearly calls for the comprehensive rectification of "involution" competition as an important measure to break down the blockages that hinder the construction of a unified national market.

Obviously, the signal sent by the Party Central Committee is very clear. We should integrate all forces, resolutely rectify the "involution" competition, speed up the improvement of the socialist market economic system and mechanism, and form a good market order of fair and orderly competition. In December 2025, the Central Economic Work Conference listed the in-depth rectification of "involution" competition as a key task.

In this context, President Song Zhiping launched this book at the right time, at the right time, with special significance.

As early as the end of the 20th century, President Song Zhiping and I have known each other. In order to promote the building materials industry to eliminate backwardness, merger and reorganization, transformation and upgrading, we often communicate together.

Since the "involution" competition of national governance in 2024, Song Zhiping, in the name of the president of China Association of Listed Companies, combined with his own experience and thinking, has played an active role and put forward a number of governance opinions and targeted measures, which have been affirmed by the government, supported by enterprises and welcomed by the society.

We have participated in related activities together several times, because of our common experience and ideas, we always feel that there are many consensus and topics on how to do a good job in the management of the volume, often the time has passed, but it is still unfinished.

When President Song Zhiping sent me the manuscript of the book and asked me to write a preface, I just browsed the table of contents and felt bright at the moment. I didn't expect such a weighty work to be presented in such a short time. As I read it page by page, I couldn't bear to let it go.

Looking back, I have an experience of working in the national macroeconomic department, some of which are related to the management of overcapacity. It can be seen that although the state has curbed the situation of overcapacity in some traditional industries through policy guidance and market means, and has made some achievements, how to ensure the long-term effectiveness of such results is a difficult problem to be solved, and sometimes we have to face the dilemma of pressing the gourd to float. What is the crux of

this phenomenon? What are the underlying reasons? How to reflect the effectiveness of the measures? How to solve the problem of system and mechanism?

This book is a deep reflection on this series of problems. If we compare this book to a sword piercing the haze of the inner volume, it at least includes some of these characteristics.

This book is like an anti-introversion textbook. This book constructs a distinctive anti-involution theoretical system, which is explained from the perspectives of in-depth understanding of involution, policy guidance, anti-unfair competition, elimination of backward production capacity, industry self-discipline and cooperation, m & a and reorganization, reasonable pricing, new blue sea strategy, strengthening intellectual property protection, and building a unified national market. The analysis is thorough.

For example, "anti-involution" has been a working term for just over a year, but the book points out that the discussion of involution in economics has not been interrupted since the 18th century.

The book also points out that the most intuitive reason for involution is overcapacity and homogeneous competition, and the deeper reason is the short-sightedness of enterprise strategy and the blind worship of scale, which makes many enterprises keen on the horizontal expansion of market share, rather than vertical cultivation of value and technology.

In essence, such enterprise competition deviates from the track of fair competition in market economy and goes into a vicious circle of harming others and not benefiting oneself. This view can really be said to be true.

This book is like an anti-involution policy interpretation. Since the launch of the "involution" competition action, the central ministries and relevant agencies have issued a series of policies. How to give full play to the effectiveness of these policies is a matter of great concern to enterprises and even local governments, and is also necessary for comprehensive governance. President

Song Zhiping not only deeply learned and understood the spirit of policy documents, but also spared no effort to publicize and interpret them on various occasions.

He put forward in all earnestness: "To control disorderly competition and eliminate excess capacity, enterprises should make good use of various policies issued by the state and local governments." In particular, he stressed: "In the industrial policy toolbox, there are three policies that need special attention, namely, the policy of deepening supply-side structural reform, the policy of stimulating innovation, and the policy of optimizing the industrial layout."

He also pointed out sharply: "It is the basis of anti-involution to focus on rectifying prominent problems such as local protection and market segmentation and to build a unified national market." In view of the key points of implementation that enterprises are most concerned about, this book also interprets and explains them in different industries, scales and regions, and becomes a powerful pusher to help the policy land.

This book is like a collection of practical cases of anti-involution. After in-depth study and repeated comparison, President Song Zhiping creatively put forward three necessary steps for anti-involution, namely, recognizing the current situation, reshaping the concept of competition and taking comprehensive measures to control it, and explained this view with a large number of vivid facts. President

Song Zhiping has studied theories and is familiar with the actual situation of enterprises. Whether it is the practical examples of Chinese and foreign enterprises or the experience and lessons of various enterprises, he can make the obscure truth like gurgling water into the minds of readers.

At the same time, it provides researchers with case samples with clear objectives, appropriate details and standard norms. A considerable part of the selection of these examples comes from President Song Zhiping's first-line research, which not only has the personal experience of traditional industries, but also has the painful lessons of emerging industries, which increases the reliability and readability of this book.

This book is like a set of underlying logic of anti-involution. As a result, the vast number of enterprises have suffered, the industry is in chaos, and the normal market order has been seriously impacted. President

Song Zhiping tried his best to dig out the root from the perspective of economic theory. He pointed out that involution is a kind of consumptive vicious competition, and its essence is a kind of excessive competition. It is an inefficient and irrational competitive behavior of enterprises in order to compete for these resources under limited resources. Involution often leads to excessive consumption of resources. But the income is not proportional.

In terms of the fields involved in the involution problem and the measures to be taken to deal with the involution, President Song Zhiping did not stay on the matter of fact, but based on the theoretical discussion and practical results of Chinese and foreign economics, proposed that enterprises should get rid of the negative sum game, turn to jointly create incremental markets, change their goals, and achieve the development of quality, efficiency and resilience; We should change the path and open up the blue sea of value innovation.

These three changes constitute the ideological cornerstone of anti-involution and form the policy of treating both the symptoms and the root causes.

This book is like an anti-involution operation manual.For anti-involution, President Song Zhiping did not stop at theoretical discussion, but tried to give practical and operable solutions in line with the actual situation of enterprises.

In terms of eliminating backward production capacity, promoting industry self-discipline and cooperation, carrying out mergers and acquisitions, and improving industry concentration, President Song Zhiping takes his own experience and the actual operation of Chinese and foreign enterprises as an example to detail the main points of work and the obstacles that may be encountered, which is very operational for front-line personnel.

In the implementation of the new blue ocean strategy, strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights, and building a unified national market, he used plain language to talk about strategic positioning, path selection, policy grasp, resource utilization and so on.

Especially in the chapter of "Reasonable Pricing", President Song Zhiping explained in detail the management methods of Japanese management master Kazuo Inamori and German invisible champion Hermann Simon, and combined with his own profound insights into the management of enterprises, giving people the feeling of hand-in-hand preaching and dispelling doubts, which made people sigh with emotion. The curtain of "involution" competition in

comprehensive governance has been opened. Whether it is an enterprise that wants to actively participate in "anti-involution" to find its own blue sea, a researcher who wants to find the pain points in reality based on market theory research, a government department that wants to enhance the effectiveness of competition policy, or a school teacher and student who wants to enhance the perception of real economic life, or a school teacher and student who wants to enhance the perception of real economic life, or a school teacher and student who wants to explore our country. I will send a suggestion-read this masterpiece of President Song Zhiping.

Song Zhiping: Why did I write the book Anti-involution? The Politburo meeting in July

2024 pointed out that it was necessary to strengthen industry self-discipline and prevent "involution" vicious competition. The Central Economic Work Conference at the end of 2024 proposed comprehensive rectification of "involution" competition; After that, the Party Central Committee and the State Council issued a series of documents and policies to overcome the involution and disorderly competition. At the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee held on July 30,

2025, it was also pointed out that the disorderly competition of enterprises should be governed according to law and regulations, the capacity management of key industries should be promoted, and the local investment attraction behavior should be standardized. On September 16,

2025, General Secretary Xi Jinping published a signed article in Qiushi magazine entitled "Promoting the Construction of a Unified National Market in Depth", in which he pointed out that the disaster-stricken areas should be effectively managed in accordance with the law and regulations, and that anti-involution should be included in the important task of the construction of a unified national market. The Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Formulation of the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development, adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Twentieth Central Committee of the

Communist Party of China, also explicitly calls for the comprehensive rectification of "involution" competition, and the governance of involution in the industry has risen from the level of industry self-discipline to the level of national strategic co-ordination.

In the past two years, speeches, articles, documents and revisions of laws and regulations at important meetings of the central government, ministries and associations on the governance of involution competition have gradually made people realize the harm of involution and the importance of anti-involution from the policy and legal levels, and deepened their understanding of the nature of involution vicious competition. Therefore, the anti-involution work in all walks of life has been started one after another, which should be said to be another major market restructuring of our government after the supply-side structural reform in 2015, with far-reaching practical and historical significance.

In fact, since the prevention of involution competition was first proposed, I have been planning to write the book Anti-involution: From Vicious Competition to Value Co-creation. Now I finally handed in the manuscript, which made me breathe sigh of relief and feel relieved. Writing this book, I have a lot of pressure, because the volume is a heavy topic, even today, we often have different opinions. Some entrepreneurs and scholars

often interpret involution as the necessity of market economy, believing that good enterprises should not be afraid of involution, that the more they roll, the more glorious they will be, and that they will roll out a new world and international brands.

But for me, the pain of involution makes me feel painful, whether it is the price war of gypsum board in Beixin Building Materials, the vicious competition when I was doing cement business in China Building Materials Group, or the photovoltaic modules, new energy vehicles and power batteries that I witnessed as the president of China Association of Listed Companies in recent years. These experiences have given me a deeper understanding of the inner volume.

Over the years, I have been running around for the orderly competition of the market, the self-discipline of the industry and the innovation and transformation of enterprises. This book is a summary of my years of thinking and observation, how to look at the inner volume, how to change from vicious competition to benign competition, how to change from price competition to value competition, and how to change from cost-oriented to value creation. How to move from competition to competition and cooperation, how to shift from Red Sea strategy to Blue Sea strategy, and how to solve these problems are my original intention of writing this book.

Involution is a kind of extremely destructive vicious competition in economic life, and some experts believe that it is the enemy of China's economic development. In fact, involution means that enterprises adopt homogeneous technology to carry out repeated construction, resulting in serious overcapacity, and finally fall into unfair competition in the form of low-price order grabbing. Its evil consequence is that enterprises enter the cycle of low quality and low price, unable to obtain reasonable profits, thus inhibiting the innovation and investment of enterprises.

For consumers, it seems that the price is low, but because most of the consumers are also employees of enterprises, their income is reduced or even unemployed under the involution, even if the consumption is downgraded, there is still no good consumption expectation, this vicious circle will br e serious deflation in the market. Therefore, solving the problem of involution has become a top priority in all walks of life.

Market economy is a competitive economy, and competition includes benign competition and vicious competition. The competition among enterprises based on technology, quality, brand, service and reasonable price is benign competition, while the competition based on homogeneous technology at a low cost price is vicious competition.

Benign competition creates value and vicious competition destroys value. Involution is a kind of vicious competition, which is a concept we should clarify.

Market economy is also a surplus economy. Moderate surplus will promote healthy competition, but serious surplus will lead to vicious competition. Generally speaking, if there is a surplus of 20% in an industry, there will be healthy competition, which will promote technological innovation and the survival of the fittest in the industry, but if the surplus exceeds 50%, there will be serious involution, and if it exceeds 100%, there will be a crisis.

At present, the surplus of many industries is between 50% and 100%, which requires us to limit excess capacity, increase efforts to eliminate backward capacity, and to reduce capacity, we must regulate local investment and blind expansion of enterprises.

In a good and orderly market, the profit structure of the industry should be an olive structure, that is, a small number of enterprises make a lot of money, most enterprises make money, and a small number of enterprises lose money.

In the involution environment, there are often a few enterprises that make money, most enterprises do not make money, and a few enterprises suffer huge losses, so their attitudes towards anti-involution are also different. Individual advantageous enterprises often take the lead in involution and fight a price war, while most enterprises oppose involution because of the suffering of involution.

On the whole, involution will destroy the overall value of the industry, and even profitable enterprises will not make a lot of money. The low profits of Chinese enterprises are not because they are not doing well in technology, equipment and management, but because the ultra-low prices caused by involution have seriously affected their profits.

In the past few years, we always thought that involution was due to the scattered and low concentration of the industry, which was caused by the fact that many small and medium-sized enterprises did not abide by the rules. Over the years, I went to many industries to conduct in-depth research and found that no matter which industry's involution is basically closely related to the involution behavior of the leading enterprises in the industry. Some industries are not seriously surplus, and some industries are quite highly concentrated, but they are still heavily involved.

The reason is that the leading enterprises do not consider the overall interests of the industry, but rely on their own scale and cost advantages to seize more market share, hoping to clear the industry through low prices, resulting in the whole industry falling into the quagmire of declining profits or even losses. What is

more puzzling is that these leading enterprises also believe that although their profits have declined, most of their peers are losing money, and their comparative advantages are "highlighted". As a matter of fact, this kind of competition of killing one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred is not worth advocating.

On the contrary, in those industries with orderly competition and healthy development, large enterprises take the lead in abiding by the rules, not fighting vicious price wars, and actively safeguarding the overall interests of the industry, which has almost become a rule.

For example, Chinalco in the aluminum industry, Luhua in the field of edible oil, Beixin Building Materials in the field of new building materials, Lianying Medical in the field of high-end medical equipment, and Jinfeng Science and Technology in the field of wind power generation, all of these enterprises have done very well. In the final analysis

, involution is a matter of values, that is, emphasizing production rather than operation, emphasizing cost rather than value, emphasizing competition rather than cooperation, in short, emphasizing oneself rather than others, regarding the market as a battlefield, regarding competition as a war, and taking pride in competing bravely.

In game theory, there are three kinds of games, zero-sum game is a win and lose, negative-sum game is a loss, positive-sum game is a win-win, involution competition is a negative-sum game, is a game in which everyone loses. If the nest is destroyed, there will be no eggs, and there will be no winner in the involution competition. Only by reshaping the concept and rules of competition can we achieve the healthy development of the industry as a whole. In the

past, the competition was carried out under the circumstances of low productivity and large market demand. Enterprises adopted the cost-leading strategy, adopted the management idea of quantity, cost and profit, and adhered to the principle of cost pricing, thus winning the last round of competition and creating prosperity.The emergence of

high-tech and the arrival of the new economic era have greatly promoted the development of productive forces, coupled with the slowdown of market demand and consumption growth, the management idea of quantity, cost and profit has undoubtedly aggravated the involution.

Therefore, enterprises must use the way of innovation and value creation, vigorously carry out the business model of differentiation, subdivision, high-end and branding, change from cost pricing to value pricing, and adopt the business idea of price, cost and profit, so as to make enterprises move from the Red Sea of price involution to the blue sea of value creation.

After more than a year, the market situation and enterprise efficiency have begun to improve, but it is still a long-term and arduous work to overcome the involution. To overcome involution, we need not only macro-control policies, but also self-discipline of the industry, as well as strategic transformation of enterprises aiming at creating value. There are 10 chapters in

this book, which can be roughly divided into three parts. Policy guidance, anti-unfair competition, strengthening intellectual property protection and building a unified national market are all discussed at the macro and meso levels, aiming at transforming the Red Sea of competition into the Blue Sea.

Eliminating backward production capacity, industry self-discipline and cooperation, and mergers and acquisitions are the three key paths to balance supply and demand and improve quality, and to explore how to move from competition to competition and cooperation. Reasonable pricing and new blue ocean strategy guide enterprises how to create their own new blue ocean in an innovative and value-creating way.

In the process of managing the balance of supply and demand, many people believe that industry liquidation depends on the survival of the fittest in the market, but from the experience of previous industrial developed countries, government policies and large enterprises have played an important role in the liquidation of some industries.

Some industries can be cleared by the market, such as household appliances and some processing industries in the past, but some industries, such as steel, cement, automobile and photovoltaic industries, must be cleared by the government's industrial policies, the initiative of industry associations and the full efforts of enterprises.

Pricing is operation, so we should pay special attention to the issue of pricing. Enterprises should not passively adapt to pricing, but should grasp the initiative of pricing. They should shift from cost pricing to value pricing, and the pricing power should be returned to the management, not to the sales staff.

When implementing the new blue ocean strategy, we can use differentiation, subdivision, high-end and branding to make enterprises shift from the Red Sea of price to the blue ocean of value creation, protect innovative value with the patent strategy model, and replace local preferential policies with creating an excellent business environment.

This book, like my previous books, is based on reason, which also benefits from my years of practice and observation. When I was the leader of two central enterprises, my business covered most provinces and cities in China. In the process of "going out", I went to many countries. During the seven years when I was the president of the China Association of Listed Companies, I investigated more than 600 listed companies and more than 100 non-listed companies. I like to see people and things, observe and communicate closely, which is also the source of the case stories in the book. Where can

I write a book? I just summarize my observations and thoughts, especially the communication content I have done with enterprises in different industries and the training content I have done for entrepreneurs. My book really does not have too many profound theories, mostly a summary of practical experience and observation, which is characterized by easy reading and practicality.

In writing this book, I still follow the usual way of "thinking first, doing first, speaking later and writing later". From 2024 to 2025, I talked about anti-involution twice at the Shanghai Entrepreneurs Conference, at the meetings of China Iron and Steel Industry Association and China Photovoltaic Industry Association, and I also talked about it many times to different enterprises.

Photovoltaic industry has the anxiety of overcapacity, this industry anti-involution should reduce production and capacity together, both hands should be hard, especially the leading enterprises and leading enterprises should focus on the interests of the industry, the interests of the industry are higher than interests of the enterprise, the interests of the enterprise are bred in the interests of the industry, as long as large enterprises take the lead in anti-involution, photovoltaic is still a promising industry. The overcapacity of the

iron and steel industry is not serious. It is necessary to change from cost reduction and efficiency enhancement to quality improvement and efficiency enhancement, from cost assessment to profit assessment, from cost pricing to value pricing, and from scale cost to quality value.

To solve the involution of the automobile industry, it is necessary to continue to increase exports, but not to bring the domestic price involution abroad, to pursue a stable profit, domestic sales should not be lower than cost of sales and squeeze the profits of suppliers, take the route of differentiation and high-end, from the Red Sea of vicious price competition to the Blue Sea of value creation. After explaining these things, I spent more than half a year constantly revising the manuscript, which is more and more perfect.

In fact, this book is different from my previous books, for example, the narrative content is more extensive.

Now everyone's understanding of anti-involution is not exactly the same, and I have some worries in my mind, but anyway, this book is the first book to systematically discuss anti-involution, and it also follows the best practice model of the book "The Hard Truth: Ten Disciplines for the High-quality Development of Listed Companies". At the end of each chapter, there is a practical case of the best anti-involution, which is divided into three categories:

one is the anti-involution of specific enterprises from the enterprise level, one is the anti-involution of the whole industry from the industry level, and the other is the anti-involution of attracting investment from the local government level.

I hope that this book can further promote the common understanding of involution competition and provide reference for anti-involution work in all walks of life in China. How can

cement industry establish a new consensus and restore the healthy ecology of the industry in the game of the stock market? China Cement Net will hold a " < a href =" https://www.ccement. in Hangzhou on April 9-10.