In response to a year-on-year decline in industrial profits across various sectors in the first half of the year, the Chinese government has initiated a nationwide campaign to prevent companies from engaging in ‘cutthroat’ pricing practices. The Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, during a meeting on July 30, emphasized the need to deepen the construction of a unified national market, optimize market competition order, and regulate disorderly competition through laws and regulations. The Politburo also proposed measures to boost consumption, cultivate new growth points for service consumption, and expand commodity consumption. This decision follows the National Statistics Bureau’s report on July 27, which revealed a 1.8% decline in industrial profits to 3.44 trillion yuan (US$473 billion) in the first six months of the year. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) experienced a 7.6% drop in profits, while joint-stock companies saw a 3.1% decrease. Foreign companies in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan reported a 2.5% increase in profits, while private firms saw a 1.7% rise. The campaign aims to address ‘neijuan,’ or involution, characterized by price wars due to low demand, high inventory, excessive production capacity, and over-competition. Economists attribute the profit decline to weak domestic consumption, a sluggish property market, and the impact of US-China tariff wars. The government’s efforts include encouraging mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and controlling new production capacity in traditional industries while supporting innovation in emerging sectors.