PKR MP Wants Pinduoduo Suspended; His Heart’s In The Right Place But His Stats, Less So

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Tan Kar Hing wants Pinduoduo suspended — until Malaysia builds proper rules to handle what he calls an unfair game: a Chinese platform that ships factory-direct goods at prices no local retailer, carrying full compliance costs, can match.

The PKR MP for Gopeng, Perak, made the call this week, arguing that the Chinese e-commerce platform’s factory-to-consumer model lets foreign sellers skip the taxes, audits, and compliance costs that every Malaysian shop owner has to deal with.

Local businesses, he said, cannot compete — and the numbers make it easy to see why.

For context, a Malaysian retailer selling a household item for RM13 is up against the same product on Pinduoduo for RM2, with free delivery from Guangzhou, while the local seller paid for SIRIM certification, SST registration, and warehouse rent; the factory in China paid for none of it.

The platform, which officially entered the Malaysian market on 21 April, should be pulled from app stores until a real regulatory framework is in place, said Tan.

The instinct is not wrong.

But some of the numbers he brought to the fight did not quite show up ready.

The Stat That Slipped

Tan cited SMEs as making up 98 per cent of Malaysian businesses and contributing “nearly half” of GDP — the kind of figures that land well in a speech and travel fast on social media.

The actual numbers from SME Corp Malaysia put the share of businesses at 96.1 per cent as of 2024.

Close, but not 98.

The GDP contribution sits at 39.5 per cent — not nearly half.

The figure that does approach half is employment, at 48.7 per cent.

Somewhere between drafting the post and hitting publish, the employment stat appears to have quietly swapped seats with the GDP one.

It is the kind of mistake that will not matter to the Shopee Live seller watching her orders dry up — but it will matter enormously to anyone looking for a reason to change the subject.

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The Tax That Already Exists

His sharpest line — that cross-border platforms operate tax-free while local sellers carry the full burden — was accurate: in 2023.

Malaysia introduced a 10 per cent Low Value Goods tax on cross-border online purchases starting 1 January 2024, specifically to close that gap.

The free ride, at least on paper, ended eighteen months ago.

What remains is a legitimate structural problem: foreign platforms are still not subject to the same consumer protection obligations, product certification requirements, or SST registration rules that govern local businesses.

The playing field is still tilted, just not as tilted as the post implied.

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The Point Stands, The Proof Needs Work

None of this makes Tan wrong about the core issue.

Platforms like Pinduoduo operate at a scale and speed that local MSMEs — 96 per cent of all businesses in the country, employing nearly half the workforce — are structurally unable to match, especially when compliance costs are not equally distributed.

The argument for a regulatory pause is not unreasonable; India has done versions of it.

The European Union (EU) is in the middle of doing it right now.

But in a debate where the numbers will be scrutinised harder than the platform ever was, arriving with rounded-up figures and an outdated tax grievance makes it easier to dismiss the messenger than address the message.

The fight is worth having; the homework could have been tighter.

READ MORE: Pinduoduo Lands In Malaysia And Shoppers Are Obsessed, But Not Local Vendors

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PKR MP Wants Pinduoduo Suspended; His Heart’s In The Right Place But His Stats, Less So
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