Yongli Alkali beat the British soda monopoly by winning a foreign jury's gold medal

China had no domestic soda-ash industry until 1917. Brunner Mond, the British chemical trust, held a near-monopoly over the alkali that glass, textile, dye and soap factories needed, and during World War One's shipping shortages it multiplied prices seven- or eightfold, idling Chinese mills that depended on it. Fan Xudong founded Yongli in Tianjin to break that dependence, but the Solvay soda-making process was a closely guarded trade secret, and nine years of failed trial batches meant Yongli had nothing yet to sell.

When engineer Hou Debang cracked the process on 29 June 1926, producing soda over 99 percent pure and matching Brunner Mond's own grade, Yongli still faced a problem no lab result could fix: Chinese buyers assumed foreign soda was reliable and homegrown soda was not, and a struggling domestic firm insisting otherwise was exactly what a struggling domestic firm would say. Brunner Mond, sensing the threat, answered the breakthrough with a price war, cutting its China prices to roughly 40 percent of their prior level to bankrupt Yongli before it could build a reputation.

Shipped Red Triangle soda to a foreign jury in Philadelphia, whose gold medal for purity became a credential Chinese buyers' own bias trusted, out-arguing any price war.

Chinese buyers already trusted foreign authority, so a foreign jury's medal was instantly credible.

The medal came from a disinterested jury, so it survived scrutiny better than a self-issued claim.

The price war targeted cost, not the perception gap, so the medal closed the gap pricing couldn't.

The medal turned the 'foreign is better' bias into proof for the domestic product.

When customers distrust your origin, import a credential from a source they already trust instead of arguing your own case.

Brunner Mond's price war failed to dislodge Yongli: by 1933 Yongli's domestic soda sales overtook Brunner Mond's for the first time, and by 1937 Brunner Mond and other foreign brands' combined China market share had fallen to roughly 40 percent. Accounts differ on the exact peace terms — Tencent News (2024) describes an agreement under which Brunner Mond distributed Red Triangle soda in Japan; other retrospectives place a market-division deal (roughly 55/45 in Yongli's favor) closer to 1936 — but all agree the British monopoly never recovered its former position.