The subsidy is not ending, the rules for phones have not changed, and the countdown to a "last chance" is manufactured. What has changed is the arithmetic, and it points in opposite directions for the two things on your list.

Buy the phone before 11.11. Wait for 11.11 on the fridge.

The cap is the whole story

The 2026 rules, in the notice 商务部等5部门 issued on 31 December (商办流通函2025年第469号), are unchanged for digital goods: phones, tablets, smart watches and smart glasses, 15% off, up to ¥500 per item, one item per category per person, and only on products priced at or below ¥6,000. Appliances get the same 15% with a ¥1,500 cap, on six categories (fridge, washing machine, television, air conditioner, computer, water heater) and only at level-1 energy or water efficiency.

Both caps are where the shopping decision lives.

For a phone, the ¥500 cap starts biting at ¥3,333. Below that you get the full 15%. At ¥4,999 you get a flat ¥500, or 10%. At ¥5,999 you get ¥500 for 8.3%. For a fridge, the ¥1,500 cap does not bite until ¥10,000, so a ¥3,000 appliance still gets the whole 15% and even a ¥9,000 one gets ¥1,350.

Now put the other number next to it. Memory prices have pushed phone prices up several hundred yuan and laptops up more than a thousand this year. The National Energy Administration is not the source here, so here is the consumer one: an HP gaming laptop was ¥10,998 on 29 June 2026, and by 1 July it had been repriced so that the price after adding the national subsidy was still close to ¥12,000. The subsidy had stopped covering the increase in two days.

Meanwhile the central pot for consumer trade-ins shrank. In 2024 the government put ¥150 billion of ultra-long special treasury bonds into consumer trade-ins, ¥300 billion in 2025, and ¥250 billion in 2026. That is 16.7% less than last year.

The deadline that is not a deadline

Plenty of posts are telling you the subsidy ends on 15 October. It does not. The policy notice dated 29 December (发改环资〔2025〕1745号) says the money is released to provinces in quarterly batches, and any central quota a region has not spent by 31 December 2026 is clawed back. The NDRC confirmed on 30 September that the fourth and final batch of ¥62.5 billion had gone out and the full ¥250 billion for the year was released.

The panic is a repeat of 2025. Xinhua investigated it in June 2025 and found real regional exhaustion: Chongqing's cloud platform had posted that 27 sub-categories of green smart appliance subsidies were used up, while Jiangsu and Hubei pages showed "subsidy activity upgrading". Hubei sold daily quota coupons, first come first served. Xinhua's verdict was blunt: "所谓取消'国补'的情况是不存在的…最近一些企业、平台和自媒体借机炒作，搞饥饿营销，营造恐慌情绪，消费者要特别注意辨别." Some platforms and content accounts are trading on hunger marketing, and consumers should be careful to tell it apart. China's state broadcaster China Voice ran a piece on 23 October headlined "网传家电国补正在退场是假的" — the subsidy is not withdrawing.

The 2026 change is designed to break that cycle, and the reason is worth knowing. 国务院发展研究中心 researcher 王微 on CCTV in January: in 2024 the money came mostly in the third and fourth quarters, in 2025 it was front-loaded, and that is exactly why so many regions reported the funds used up by the back half of the year. 2026 switched to quarterly, even release. So whatever the quota situation in your province, there is no national cliff on 15 October.

The three rules that change your order

Apply your coupons first, then the subsidy. The rule is 15% of "扣除各环节优惠后最终销售价格的15%" — the final price after every other discount. So the stack order is: store coupon, category coupon, platform coupon, then the national subsidy on what is left. Reversing it costs you money.

Check the four numbers the seller must display. The same notice requires participating merchants to publish, item by item, the initial sale price, the merchant's discount amount, the subsidy amount and the final price, and forbids 先涨价后补贴 (raising the price then subsidising it). The 商务部 notice adds that goods which violate price filing or that inflate first get no subsidy reimbursed. If the "original price" on the page has quietly gone up since last month, that is the scam, and you can see it because the four numbers have to be there.

Split the household across accounts. The applicant, the payer and the recipient must be the same person, and each person gets one item per category. Two adults can each claim one subsidised phone. One account cannot claim two.

What to actually do in November

The three platforms are running different clocks. Tmall opened presale on 15 October and starts selling on 20 October, running to 11 November at midnight. JD opened all-categories spot sales on 12 October, then runs presale from 20 October, 开门红 from 31 October, category days from 4 to 10 November, and a 11 to 13 November return phase. JD's own published guide calls 开门红 the concentrated release of the year's low point, which is a marketing claim, not a fact.

Skip the presale. The China Consumer Association, the China Society for Market Regulation and the China National Articles Coding Centre said on 26 October to put "看清楚" ahead of "抢得快" and "用得上" ahead of "看起来便宜". Their specific warning: some consumers reported paying more in the final-payment stage of a presale than the current spot price, and customer service answered that "the promotion is different". Compare the two yourself before you commit.

They also flagged that 定金 in a presale is a deposit with guarantee function and is normally non-refundable, while 订金 is closer to a prepayment with more room to get it back. And that consumption coupons are often left unticked by default, so check the discount box before you pay. For disputes, the 全国消协智慧315平台 takes complaints.

Price protection is the part worth checking carefully. Suning advertises a 100-day price protection window and a 保值换新 option giving 30 days of full refunds, 365 days of replacement and 50% value retention over five to ten years on large appliances. JD's own guide promises price protection and seven-day no-reason returns on its own goods but does not publish the window length in the material it supplied.

One more tool, launched yesterday: the market regulator's 全国放心消费平台 is live as of 3 November, searchable in WeChat as 消费查. It gives each certified shop a one-store-one-code mark, and Baidu Maps has tagged more than 10,000 certified units and clusters, with around 3,000 restaurants lit up on Meituan, Taobao Flash Sale and JD Delivery, across nine cities so far. Worth checking whether the shop you are buying a used phone from is on it.

The verdict

For phones, tablets and laptops, buy now. The subsidy cap is fixed at ¥500 while memory costs are moving the shelf price by more than that, and Lei Jun has already told buyers the same thing: on 21 May he said that over the next two years memory prices will keep rising, phone prices will follow, and anyone planning to change phone within a year should "强烈推荐你，现在就换". Xiaomi's China market chief 魏思琪 had already adjusted recommended retail prices on three in-market models by 3 April, and on 16 May president 卢伟冰 said some domestic flagship straight-screen phones would break ¥10,000 by the end of the year, with the trend running to the end of 2027 or even 2028. TrendForce puts second-quarter 2026 commodity DRAM contract prices up 58% to 63% quarter on quarter and NAND up 70% to 75%.

For appliances at level-1 efficiency, wait for 11.11. There the 15% still applies in full, the ¥1,500 cap rarely bites, and the platform coupons stack on top of it in the order above. That is where the money actually is.

And if a seller tells you the subsidy ends in October, they are the one selling you the story.

Sources