更深层的威胁来自所谓「内卷」或 neijuan：过多企业争夺有限的国内市场，让利润长期被压缩。Bruegel 关于中国企业利润动态的研究指出，利润下滑主要不是成本上升所致——工资停滞且电价下降——而是大量企业围绕同一个缩小需求池互相争食，形成高强度价格战与过剩产能。最具破坏性的是，这种侵蚀由中国本土较低生产率的企业加重，而非外资竞争者；中国的市场领先者不主要失去的是与外国公司的市场份额，而是将利润让渡给效率较低的同业。
效率低下企业理应退出，但中国地方政府通常以补贴、采购偏好和银行信贷延续其生存，因为地方官员的绩效与就业责任使其有动机维持「可见」的就业与产业规模。这种在单位层面合理的政治经济行为，会累积稀释良性企业的定价权与盈利能力，进而缩小其下一轮创新可用资金池。最早显示此效应的是制造业固定资产投资下滑。政策层面虽有缩减补贴与去产能的初步举措，但在自动化加速与潜在失业风险下，改革缺乏推进力度。结果形成悖论：中国最能代表全球竞争力的企业在国内被内耗削弱，但在国际市场仍具有提升市占的动机与能力，这意味着西方难以放松对中国企业的竞争与安全防线。
The article likens China’s corporate system to cholesterol: globally competitive firms are the “good” cholesterol, while weak protected firms act like harmful ones. It argues that the biggest threat to firms such as BYD, CATL, and Huawei is not Donald Trump’s protectionism but domestic overhang. Donald Trump’s first year in office brought broad tariff pressure on Chinese goods, while his second year shifted toward resource pressure and geopolitical escalation. Europe is also tightening through the EU Industrial Accelerator Act. Yet compared with many multinationals, China’s firms remain relatively resilient: China is in a still-deflationary environment, has strategic petroleum reserves and energy links, and uses large refining and trade flexibility with renewables and coal capacity to absorb shocks.
The deeper risk is involution, or neijuan: too many firms chase a finite domestic demand pool, compressing profits over many years. Bruegel’s research cited in the text shows profits have eroded not because costs are rising—wages are stagnant and electricity prices are falling—but because of intense price competition and excess firms. The loss is mainly to lower-productivity domestic peers, not foreign rivals. In effect, global leaders lose margin at home to weak siblings rather than to outsiders, even while they continue to outcompete globally in batteries, EVs, semiconductors, and telecom infrastructure.
Policy support keeps this inefficient layer alive. Local governments often continue subsidies, procurement support, and credit through banks, partly to preserve employment and local performance targets. Individually rational political incentives therefore accumulate into a macro drag: pricing power and profitability of the best companies are eroded, and these are the resources needed for future innovation. A warning sign is the sharp fall in manufacturing fixed-asset investment, including among productive firms. While officials discuss reducing subsidies and overcapacity, automation-era employment anxiety restrains reform. The result is a paradox: China’s strongest firms are undercut domestically by domestic underperformers, even as they remain positioned to raise market share abroad, which means external policymakers cannot simply lower defences against them.