By Stephanie Li丨SFC, 21st Century Business Herald

(资料图片仅供参考)

After engaging in a months-long price war of instant retail, two of China’s “Big Three” delivery platforms - Alibaba and Meituan - are again wrestling on a different ring as they unveiled new initiatives targeting each other’s turf.

Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding on Wednesday released a major update to its navigation platform Amap, adding a new artificial intelligence-powered feature allowing users to leave a ranking for local businesses just like on Dianping, an app by rival Meituan.

Now when you open Amap to find a nearby restaurant, this new "Street Stars” ranking is going to pop up—not just any list, but one weighted by your actual behavior and Alipay"s credit score. This seemingly small change is quietly rewriting the rules of how we discover and choose local businesses, as users can review restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, and others using the new Amap ranking.

Alibaba also promised to offer over CNY1 billion of incentives to support the spending of 10 million customers on car rides, dining, and other services.

Alibaba set up the Amap “Street Stars” project in June and has since been making secret progress, covering over 1.6 million offline service providers in more than 300 Chinese cities, including over 870,000 restaurants, 230,000 hotels, and nearly 50,000 scenic spots.

Amap “Street Stars” is based on users" behavior trends rather than their likes or favorites, values returning customers, and will never be commercialized, said Guo Ning, chief executive of Amap.

Interestingly, Alibaba linked the feature to Amap rather than its Taobao Flash Buy, which market analysts attributed to the former"s mapping and navigation data.

Alibaba’s move isn"t just another marketing push—it"s a full-on assault on Meituan"s most profitable territory: in-store services.

Let"s put things in perspective. China"s local services market is predicted to hit CNY35.3 trillion by 2025, with only 30.8% of that happening online. So there"s massive room to grow.

Alibaba"s strategy here is cleverly layered. Let"s break it down. First, traffic. As one of the most popular map apps in China, Amap hails national utility with 700 million monthly active users. Every time someone searches for directions, that"s a chance to nudge them toward a nearby café or shop. It"s like turning every car ride or walk into a potential shopping trip.

Then there"s the tech angle. By tying in Alipay"s credit system, they"re filtering reviews through a trust layer. So a five-star rating from someone with a solid credit score matters more than a random anonymous review. Add AI to eliminate fake comments, and suddenly you"ve got a more reliable recommendation engine.

And let"s not forget the ecosystem play. That CNY1 billion subsidyworks hand-in-hand with Ele.me"s delivery services, creating a loop: find a place on Amap, go there, or get it delivered via Ele.me, avoiding Meituan"s stronghold in food delivery and hitting where Meituan is vulnerable: trusted recommendations.

The numbers back up why Alibaba"s doubling down. Their local services arm grew 12% last fiscal year to CNY67 billion. Even better, losses are shrinking—down to CNY2.3 billion in Q4. They"re getting more efficient, which gives them the cash to invest here. And who can blame them? Meituan once saw 43.3% profit margins in in-store services. Alibaba certainly wants a piece of that.

But Meituan isn’t sitting idle. On the same day, Meituan’s Dianping platform relaunched its “Premium Delivery” service, promising 30-minute delivery from top-rated restaurants featured in its “Must Eat” list and “Black Pearl” guide.

Dianping said it would "restore" its quality food delivery service by using a self-developed business-to-business AI model to analyze users" demand based on a vast amount of review data, filtering non-genuine reviews to provide a reliable reference for decision-making, with consumer-facing AI agents set to launch within a week. It will also issue 25 million large-denomination "quality takeout" consumption coupons. 

The effect of Dianping"s new project remains to be seen because its users tend to dine in, while restoring the food delivery business requires guiding users to order food on the app, analysts pointed out.

Meituan "suffered grievously" in the last round of the food delivery war with JD.Com and Alibaba"s Ele.me. Its net profit plunged 89% to CNY1.5 billion in the six months ended June 30 from a year earlier, while its revenue rose 12% to CNY91.8 billion, it said in its first-half financial report released on Aug. 27.

Meituan"s strength has always been its network effect—more restaurants mean more riders, which brings more customers. But that doesn"t protect them in in-store services, where fake reviews have long been a problem. Alibaba"s "never commercialize" promise for its rankings hits right at that trust issue.

Now, Alibaba is building a "home delivery + in-store" and "long-distance + nearby" ecosystem. But to challenge Meituan"s Dianping—with its deep content and user habits—Amap needs more than traffic and data. It will need a richer content ecosystem and stronger merchant partnerships. 

The more intriguing fact is that this AI-driven battle is rewriting the rules of local services, shifting trust from subjective reviews to real behaviors, moving decision-making from users to machines, and refocusing businesses from traffic chasing to value creation.

The endgame here won’t be endless app wars. It’ll be a showdown between super AI assistants—the one that truly understands what consumers want, and the one that delivers better experiences and more choices for both businesses and consumers. That’s where the future of local services will be decided.

Editor: LI Yanxia

Host: Stephanie LI

Writer: Stephanie LI

Sound Editor: Stephanie LI

Graphic Designer: ZHENG Wenjing, LIAO Yuanni

Produced by 21st Century Business Herald

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