The answer to every question may be hidden in the plain SHEIN T-shirt Xu Yangtian wore.
Sept. 1, 2026, Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Xu Yangtian, wearing a SHEIN T-shirt, stood in a corner of the bell-ringing ceremony. There was no speech, no gong, and he left quickly after the ceremony ended. That day, SHEIN officially listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange under the ticker 00625.HK. The shares opened below the offer price, fell more than 9% at one point during trading, and closed at HK$48.50, giving a market value of about US$26.1 billion.
It was a jarring scene. After all, SHEIN was once the world's third-largest unicorn, valued at US$98.2 billion in 2022, behind only ByteDance and SpaceX. A cross-border e-commerce giant that sells Chinese supply-chain products to 160 countries, a platform company hailed as a benchmark for Chinese companies going global — its IPO should have been a raucous capital-market celebration. Instead, mainstream media were almost uniformly silent, and social-media discussion was remarkably restrained, as if everyone had tacitly agreed not to comment, question, or dig deeper.
Why did SHEIN's listing become a zone of silence?
Silence Is the Best PR
Rewind to four years ago.
In 2022, SHEIN completed a Series D funding round at a pre-money valuation of US$98.2 billion. At the time, the global pandemic had fueled explosive growth in online consumption, and SHEIN's flexible supply-chain model of "small orders, quick turnaround" was held up as the gold standard. Capital markets believed the company could fundamentally reshape global apparel retail. Had it listed successfully then, it might have become one of the largest IPOs globally in recent years.
But SHEIN chose silence. When someone suggested setting up a public-relations department, Xu Yangtian replied: "They can write whatever they want, but if it's not true, I will definitely sue them." Investors also largely declined interviews, citing the need to accommodate the company's preference for a low profile.
Such extreme reticence can seem mysterious in good times, but in bad times it becomes an unspeakable embarrassment.
In 2023, Shein confidentially filed for a US IPO with the SEC, but failed amid data-security and geopolitical scrutiny. In 2024, it turned to London, where founder Xu Yangtian and Chairman Tang Wei made multiple trips to meet the Chancellor of the Exchequer and international investors, and even secured IPO approval from UK financial regulators. But just before the final step, Shein in May 2025 terminated its contracts with two top PR firms: Brunswick, which handled media relations, and FGS, which handled government relations. The contracts expired without renewal.
This is an extremely dangerous signal. For a company racing toward an IPO, changing leadership (or PR firms) at the last minute is almost tantamount to admitting that its previous communications strategy has failed completely and that the listing process has hit a major obstacle.
Since then, Shein's valuation has collapsed. From $98.2 billion to $64 billion, then $50 billion, $40 billion, $30 billion... finally settling at $26.1 billion. That is a decline of more than 70% from its peak, leaving late-stage investors with severe paper losses and forcing the company to pay about $1.3 billion in cash compensation.
When a once-$100-billion myth finally hits the capital markets at a valuation below $30 billion and breaks below its IPO price, silence becomes the best PR strategy. Any high-profile promotion would only highlight how glaring the gap has become.
Where Is the Next Sexy Narrative?
An IPO is essentially about selling a story. Today, Shein's story is that even its founder seems too tired to tell a new one.
Shein's core competitiveness was once summed up as 'small-batch, fast-response' — using a digital system to distribute orders to contract factories, compressing the cycle from design to shelf to a minimum, and achieving 'large-scale automated small-batch fast turnaround.' This model was unstoppable during the pandemic: from 2020 to 2022, Shein's revenue grew 140%, 208%, and 98%, respectively.
But the story is over.
According to the prospectus, Shein's revenue growth was 41.1% in 2023, 20.7% in 2024 and 8% in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, growth collapsed to 1.1%. Net profit fell to $2.064 billion in 2025 from $3.365 billion in 2024, and swung to a $99 million loss in the first quarter of 2026.
More damaging is the shift in the external environment. In May 2025, the U.S. eliminated the duty-free exemption for packages under $800. In July 2026, Europe also scrapped its small-import duty-free policy. The U.S. and Europe together account for nearly 60% of Shein's revenue, and tariff barriers directly undercut the low-price advantage it depends on. To cope, Shein was forced to raise prices in the U.S. market, with increases of as much as 377% on some items.
With the twin engines of low prices and fast response hit by tariff shocks, and revenue growth slowing from triple digits to single digits, capital markets are asking: after flexible supply chains, what is Shein's next compelling story?
Is it platform transformation? Shein is indeed trying to evolve from a self-owned brand to a hybrid self-operated and marketplace model, bringing in third-party merchants. But that means direct competition with Amazon and Temu, where Shein lacks advantages in logistics fulfillment and consumer mindshare.
Is it AI and digitalization? Shein plans to allocate 40% of its raised funds to improving technology capabilities. But the 'AI plus apparel' narrative is far less electrifying to investors than 'AI plus chips' or 'AI plus autonomous driving.'
Is it ESG and social responsibility? That area is more a source of controversy than a new story.
So perhaps the right move is to stop chasing new narratives and courting the market, and simply focus on executing the core business well. That may be what founder Xu truly believes in now. He has no choice but to stay silent.
Xu Yangtian's Invisibility
Xu Yangtian may be one of the most mysterious internet billionaires in the world.
The 42-year-old, a native of Zibo, Shandong, graduated from Qingdao University of Technology with a degree in international trade. Online, almost no high-definition public photo of him exists. Baidu Baike has scant information about him, and even photos that once circulated were not of him. According to the South China Morning Post, the only image of the founder in SHEIN's internal materials is an ordinary landscape photo with the caption: "If you have dreams, you are remarkable."
An investor who has met him describes him as "very low-key, reserved, and rarely offering opinions."
This extreme low profile was protective camouflage in the company's early days, keeping competitors from reading his hand and regulators from focusing their scrutiny. But as the company grew into the world's third-largest fashion retailer with annual revenue exceeding $40 billion and 273 million active users, the low profile became a dangerous signal.
Capital markets demand transparency. Investors need to know: Who is the decision-maker? What are his values? How will he navigate geopolitical risks? Yet Xu Yangtian has remained behind the scenes, with Executive Chairman Tang Wei serving as the public face. Tang Wei has handled congressional inquiries in the US, coordinated reviews by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, dealt with European fines, and appeared at various public events.
However, on the eve of a Hong Kong listing, Tang Wei abruptly stepped down, forcing Xu Yangtian to step into the spotlight himself. In February 2026, he made a rare appearance at Guangdong's high-quality development conference, announcing plans to invest more than 10 billion yuan in Guangdong over the next three years to build a smart supply chain, and saying "Guangdong is SHEIN's root."
This was Xu Yangtian's "ice-breaking" speech and a carefully calculated return. Before this, SHEIN had faced accusations of "de-Sinicization" after moving its headquarters to Singapore and reports that Xu himself had obtained permanent residency there. With listing routes in the US and Europe repeatedly blocked and domestic regulatory scrutiny tightening, Xu needed to reassert SHEIN's ties to the Chinese market.
Being low-key was once a strategy; now, being too low-key has itself become high-profile.
Proof of Identity
SHEIN's biggest communications dilemma is not its shrinking valuation or slowing growth, but a philosophical question: whose company is it, really?
In 2024, Shein Executive Chairman Donald Tang gave a deft answer at the Milken Institute Global Conference: "If you look at birthplace and supply chain, Shein is a Chinese company; if you look at headquarters and key personnel, Shein is a Singaporean company; if you look at market and corporate values, Shein is an American company."
The remarks were once read as a savvy "glocalization" strategy — acting as a British company in the UK, an American company in the US, selectively applying whichever rules suited it. But in practice, this identity-blurring approach proved disastrous.
US lawmakers still scrutinize Shein as a Chinese company, and London regulators did not wave it through because of the "glocalization" rhetoric. Worse, after China's trial measures governing overseas listings by domestic enterprises took effect in 2023, companies like Shein — incorporated abroad but deriving core operations and asset earnings from within China — must still comply with domestic filing requirements even if the listing entity is offshore.
A blurred identity was once an arbitrage tool; now it has become a target scrutinized by all sides.
36Kr noted sharply in a deep-dive report: "As the US and Europe begin systematically closing loopholes, 'ambiguity' itself becomes a risk. Any party can treat the company as subject to its jurisdiction, and corporate appeals become especially complicated. The identity issue is not a PR problem; it's a governance-structure problem."
Shein spent four years, moved across three jurisdictions, and saw its valuation cut in half before finally finding an answer in Hong Kong. But the answer was imperfect: the stock broke below its IPO price on the first day, market value fell to less than 30% of its peak, late-stage investors suffered heavy losses, and the company had to compensate them with cash and shares.
In fact, nearly every Chinese company going global must confront the problem of proving its identity. Shein was simply left with no choice.
The Metaphor of the Muted Zone
That Shein's listing has become a "no-talk zone" appears on the surface to be a deliberate corporate choice, but at a deeper level it is a metaphor for the era.
There was a time when Chinese companies going global could navigate between different regulatory systems by keeping their identities ambiguous, evade public scrutiny by staying low-key and mysterious, and tell a $100 billion growth story powered by supply-chain advantages and capital dividends. That era is over.
Geopolitical fault lines are widening, the duty-free window for small parcels is closing, and capital's faith in high growth is receding. As Temu enters the same arena with a humbler stance and more aggressive price wars, and as AI companies capture all the attention of capital markets, Shein finds itself stuck in an awkward middle ground: it is no longer the exciting unicorn, and neither e-commerce nor fast fashion are buzzwords anymore.
The media's silence is not because Shein lacks news value, but because no one knows how to define it.
So the best option is to refrain from commenting, questioning, or digging deeper. Shein's listing has become a no-comment zone.
But silence cannot solve problems. In the prospectus, Xu Yangtian wrote: 'Escalation of international tensions and resulting changes in international trade policies may affect Shein's product sales to global markets.' This is a belated sober realization: in an era of globalization retreat, any company trying to lean on both sides may end up leaning on neither.
Shein's story is not over. A market value of $26.1 billion, 273 million active users, and a sales network covering 160 countries remain formidable numbers. But the questions it needs to answer are still sharp. After all, as a listed company, it is, to some extent, a public company.
The answer to all these questions may lie in the plain SHEIN T-shirt Xu Yangtian wears—low-key, simple, unassuming. Yet it also means the company is trying hard to make itself look less like the $100 billion myth it once was.
Finally, a wish: Shein, which has no choice but to stay low-key, may it become better.