On November 6th, Yu Minhong, founder of New Oriental, confirmed the resignation of former Oriental Selection CEO Sun Dongxu on his personal social media account: “Recently, Dongxu has proposed not to continue working due to personal reasons. I encourage him to persevere, believe that the company will get better and better, and hope that he will return to a management position when he is suitable in the future. However, after careful consideration, he still wants to leave. In the end, I agree to his departure and no longer participate in the company’s work
Yu Minhong’s statement was quite emotional, starting with the statement: “Dongxu and I are the founders of Dongfang Zhenxuan. Without Dongxu’s efforts and unwavering struggle, the development and today of Dongfang Zhenxuan would not have been possible
This resignation was not without warning. In August of this year, there were rumors that Dongfang Zhenxuan had officially issued a statement refuting the rumors, stating that “he is on vacation and has not resigned”, and emphasizing that Sun Dongxu has been working as a consultant.
After the announcement of the resignation, the stock price of Dongfang Zhenxuan fell by 9%, and its market value evaporated by about HKD 3 billion in a single day. As of the close of November 7th, the company’s total market value was HKD 22.6 billion, evaporating over HKD 50 billion compared to its peak market value of HKD 74 billion in January 2023.
Sun Dongxu is a veteran of New Oriental. According to public information, he has been working at New Oriental since graduating from Nankai University in 2007, rising from a frontline teacher and president to positions such as regional president and group vice president. Since 2019, he has been serving as the CEO and director of New Oriental Online. After New Oriental Online officially changed its name to “Oriental Selection” in March 2023, he continued to serve as CEO.
At the end of 2021, Yu Minhong led the company through a difficult transformation. Sun Dongxu is responsible for building the framework and formulating rules for the new business of live streaming e-commerce, and some media have described him as an “iron fisted manipulator”. He truly lived up to expectations and quickly established a supply chain system, product selection, and operation team.
According to Sun Dongxu’s description, in the initial business positioning, Dongfang Zhenxuan was not a live streaming company or a star making institution, but rather an agricultural product technology company and cultural communication company. But in 2023, the explosive popularity of its anchor Dong Yuhui brought unexpected changes to the original plan.
This also triggered a series of subsequent events, including the outbreak of internal conflicts between Sun and Dong, Sun Dongxu’s dismissal from the CEO position, and Dong Yuhui’s departure and starting anew.
On the day of the news of Sun Dongxu’s resignation, the Dongfang Zhenxuan live broadcast room was still in operation, but the number of viewers was only over 3000, which was very different from the “golden age” of 100000 people two years ago.
Many netizens support him. On a personal level, it is not difficult to understand why this decision was made after being exposed online for over a year, to the point where it was renamed twice, from the earliest “Eastern Xiaosun” to “Xiaosun Tongxue” and now to “Sun Meili”. But Dongfang Zhenxuan has not yet emerged from the pain, and the once emerging star company has fallen into such a predicament, which is truly lamentable.
1、 Three people turned around
At the end of 2021, when New Oriental Online decided to transform into live streaming sales of agricultural products, Sun Dongxu was responsible for building the entire system.
He made a bet on Tiktok to bring goods in both Chinese and English, creating a cultural atmosphere and making the Oriental Selection Studio a unique IP with the attribute of knowledge payment. On the supply chain side, he strictly controlled the quality and reduced the return rate to less than 1% by means of “direct purchase at the origin+strict quality inspection”; On the organizational side, he integrated the “teaching supervision” gene of New Oriental into the product selection process, and a listed product needs to undergo “three reviews and three verifications”.
Even after the outbreak of internal conflicts, Yu Minhong once evaluated his “execution ability better than himself and Dong Yuhui”.
In June 2022, Dongfang Selection became popular overnight, and the number of Tiktok fans exceeded 1 million. Dong Yuhui has risen to become a top anchor in the industry. With him as the core anchor team, the transaction volume has been pushed up to 2 billion yuan in just six months, and the company’s stock price has risen 36 times compared to its historical low.
But in hindsight, there are already signs of conflict. In the summer of 2022, Sun Dongxu mentioned in an interview that Dong Yuhui did not possess management skills. According to him, Dong Yuhui often discusses strategic issues with him, but he advises him to “stop fantasizing about management” and even says, “You should become the president. Under your leadership, the company won’t be able to hold on for long
At that time, the relationship between the two seemed so close that they could joke about each other, and it was difficult for the outside world to predict the subsequent dramatic development of the situation.
On December 10, 2023, the official Tiktok account of Dongfang Selection placed a comment on the comment area of the “Jilin Tour” promotional video, to the effect that the “essays” displayed by the anchor in front of the camera were all the results of collaboration with copywriting and other teams, which was interpreted as implying Dong Yuhui. Dong Yuhui subsequently responded to the editor’s “Hu Reply” during the live broadcast, and the editor then gave examples in the comment section to emphasize the cooperative relationship between the two parties.
The two comments touched the nerves of fans, especially Dong Yuhui’s fans. Many comments have mentioned that this is the company’s attempt to “backstab” Dong Yuhui and “steal” his labor achievements, and the storm quickly escalated.
On the evening of December 12th, Sun Dongxu appeared in the live broadcast room to respond, but directly detonated the “powder keg”. He threw his phone onto the table, and the whole thing seemed like a “meeting” for his fans. He also publicly mentioned that Dong Yuhui’s annual salary was “not just tens of millions of yuan” as rumored on the internet, completely angering the fan base. And the information that he sold Dongfang Zhenxuan stocks at a high price in February of that year and cashed out HKD 200 million was widely mentioned, which triggered panic among small and medium-sized investors.
From December 9th to 14th, Dongfang Zhenxuan lost about 260000 followers. On December 13th, the stock price of Dongfang Zhenxuan plummeted by 12.96%, and from the 9th to the 13th alone, its market value evaporated by over HKD 6 billion.
Yu Minhong quickly made a decision. On December 14th, he apologized via video, admitting that the official actions were inappropriate and taking responsibility for the incident. On that day, Sun Dongxu also publicly apologized during the live broadcast. Two days later, the board of directors of Dongfang Zhenxuan announced the dismissal of Sun Dongxu from his positions as executive director and CEO. The announcement stated that the reason for making this appointment and dismissal decision is due to the recent public opinion storm exposing the company’s management loopholes, and Sun Dongxu’s “poor” brand and reputation management.
Yu Minhong personally went to the scene to ‘fight’. On the one hand, he announced on December 18th the appointment of Dong Yuhui as a senior partner, cultural assistant to the chairman, and vice president of the cultural and tourism group, and will establish an independent studio for him to retain this top streamer with multiple titles; On the other hand, it is also stated that Sun Dongxu can continue to participate in the work as a consultant. He publicly emphasized that Sun Dongxu’s contributions cannot be erased just because of a momentary mistake, and even publicly promised that ‘Xiao Sun will not leave Dongfang Zhenxuan’.
But this time, ‘retaining people’ only played a role for half a year. At the end of 2023, Dong Yuhui established his own portal, launched the operation of “Walking with Hui”, and officially left Dongfang Zhenxuan in July 2024.
After a period of silence, Sun Dongxu attempted to return to the forefront. On November 24th, he appeared in the live broadcast room and received over 40 million likes and over 10 million views, making it the best live broadcast of the month in terms of viewing data. On the second day of his rebroadcast, Dongfang Zhenxuan’s stock price rose by over 9% to welcome his return.
However, more than a year has passed, and this’ endgame ‘still hasn’t changed anything.
2、 De Donghua
Since Dong Yuhui went solo, the number of fans accompanying him has continued to increase, while Dongfang Zhenxuan has continued to lose fans.
Dongfang Zhenxuan has been striving to break away from its dependence on super anchors and strengthen its team’s voice, but the results have not been high. Its anchor lineup includes Dunton, Mingming, YoYo, etc., but compared to Dong Yuhui, there is still a gap in popularity. When the “Little Composition Event” happened, Dong Yuhui’s Tiktok account had more than 13 million fans, and Dundun ranked second with only about 2.13 million fans.
At present, there are over 34 million fans in the same industry as Hui, while Dongfang Zhenxuan only has about 28 million. According to data cited by China Newsweek, whether it is the first half of the year or the monthly list, Tonghang ranks first among “live streaming sales influencers”, while Dongfang Zhenxuan and related accounts did not appear in the top ten.
In August of this year, Dongfang Zhenxuan released its performance report for the fiscal year 2025 (June 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025), showing a year-on-year decrease of 32.7% in total revenue and 97.5% in net profit.
In the eyes of the industry and media, Dong Yuhui has taken away the “core purchasing power” of Dongfang Zhenxuan. In fact, before he left, Dongfang Zhenxuan had already begun to layout a multi anchor and multi category operation system: setting up vertical live streaming rooms for fresh food, clothing, beauty, etc., and implementing a rotation system for anchors.
Last summer, the new strategy began to take effect, and even after Dong Yuhui left, new anchors such as Tianquan and Dundun continued to take over. However, the loss of top anchors is still difficult to stop. In June 2025, the “new pillar” Dunton announced his resignation. His permanent beauty live streaming room had over 4 million fans, second only to the main account in terms of traffic level.
The most common evaluation of Eastern Selection from the outside world is that it has lost its literary temperament. There are no longer “Su Dongpo” and “Shakespeare” in the live broadcast room, replaced by “321 links” and “seize the last three minutes”. Dongfang Zhenxuan is transitioning from a “cultural phenomenon” to a purely “e-commerce channel”.
In mid-2024, Yu Minhong even publicly mentioned in the live broadcast room of Wumart founder Zhang Wenzhong that “(Oriental Selection) is doing a mess now”.
After losing its super anchor, Dongfang Zhenxuan has yet to achieve its ideal “product driven” and “brand driven” goals. At the financial report conference in January this year, Yu Minhong revealed that 60%~70% of the sales of Orient Selection depended on the Tiktok platform. He bluntly stated, “This is not a normal business model for an independent listed company
Dongfang Zhenxuan has been developing its own products for a long time and will launch a “Zhenxuan Member” based on its own APP in October 2023, with an annual price of 199 yuan. It wants to tell a story of ‘online Sam’s Club’ – by developing its own products to replace simple live streaming sales and highlight its unique value.
In the fiscal year 2025, Dongfang Zhenxuan has launched a total of 732 self operated products, a significant increase from 488 in the previous fiscal year; The proportion of self operated product trading volume has also increased from 40% to 43.8%; The total revenue of self operated products was 3.5 billion yuan, and the overall gross profit margin increased from 25.9% to 32%.
But this road is not smooth, and the point questioned by the media is the slowdown in growth rate: the number of paid member subscriptions added in the 2025 fiscal year was 65700, while in the second half of the 2024 fiscal year alone, it increased by 74800.
During this period, Sun Dongxu did not make any public statements and seemed to have become an outsider.
On November 7th, Yu Minhong posted a photo on his personal social media platform with his old friend and CEO of New Oriental, Zhou Chenggang, whom he has known for over 40 years. The two of them were smiling brightly in the photo.
On the 8th, he released another video. In the “New Oriental Worker’s Song”, employees used the lyrics of the song to roast about their “dissatisfaction” with the company. In the comment section, the most frequently mentioned line is one of the lyrics: No matter how great the grievances are, they cannot be greater than Yu Minhong’s.
This seems to be his response to the “spectators”: after leaving Sun Dong and his two companions, the road still has to go, and there is no one behind him.
暂无评论内容