From “Traffic Harvesting” to “Value Coexistence”: The Digital Paradox and Strategic Reconstruction of Temu’s Cross-border Expansion

Abstract

In the context of the digital economy, the globalization of China’s cross-border e-commerce platforms has entered a deep transformation zone of high-quality development. Temu, leveraging a digital ternary leverage system, has achieved explosive expansion in the cross-border market, becoming a landmark case in the global e-commerce sector. However, its rapid growth has also exposed deep-seated contradictions such as insufficient user loyalty, internal competition within the merchant ecosystem, narrowing profit margins, and intensified compliance risks. This paper takes Temu as a single case study object, based on platform economy theory and value symbiosis theory, to deconstruct the digital underlying logic of its cross-border expansion and reveal the formation mechanism of its digital paradox of “empowerment-constraint” duality. Furthermore, it constructs a strategic reconstruction path from “traffic harvesting” to “value symbiosis” from four dimensions: users, industry, region, and system. The research not only enriches the theoretical research on platform globalization but also provides an operable practical solution for Chinese cross-border e-commerce enterprises to go global with high quality.