Food delivery is a serious business in China. A 30-fold growth in the market pushed the equity value of China’s largest on-demand delivery platform to $180bn in 2021, as pandemic lockdowns gave sales a boost. The prolonged slide in shares of Meituan since then seems overdone.Meituan’s Hong Kong-listed shares are down more than 80 per cent from their 2021 peak. Part of that is due to weak consumer spending growth amid an economic slowdown. But the bigger fear is the threat that Douyin — the original Chinese version of TikTok — poses to the industry as its food delivery service business expands faster than expected.

ByteDance’s Douyin rapidly built out its food delivery operation last year to cover 30 big Chinese cities, in direct competition with Meituan. The short-video platform’s 750mn daily active users could present a formidable force.

In recent years, Beijing’s crackdowns on a wide range of industries have shown that government support is a make-or-break factor in a Chinese company’s earnings and stock performance. Being aligned with government policies and targets has proved a winning formula.