Author: Zhou Mingyue

Published by Hu Xiu APP

The narrative of Chinese enterprises going global is no longer lackluster.

In the first half of 2025, when the total overseas mergers and acquisitions of Chinese enterprises soared 79% year-on-year to $19.6 billion, when China's new contracts for overseas projects increased 12.4% year-on-year to $129.9 billion, and when AliExpress saw a surge in users in South Korea and Keeta was booming in the Middle Eastern food delivery market, a dynamic undercurrent had long been in the making.

A wave of interest in seeking China's dark horse has begun to rise.

Global capital markets, consulting firms and competitors are all scrutinizing this question closely. The role of Chinese enterprises in the global economic landscape has undergone a fundamental transformation. They are no longer silent workers, but are actively seeking to establish arenas and formulate rules, equipped with capital, technology and methodologies.

Looking back at the overseas expansion of Chinese enterprises, it can roughly be divided into three historical phases, within which lie the secrets behind the rise of each generation of successful companies.

The First Stage: Going Global 1.0: The Silent Era of Going Global 

This is the era of the world-factory, as well as a time when Chinese enterprises occupy the lowest and most silent positions in the global value chain.

The core model at this stage is OEM/ODM manufacturing.

Chinese companies do not own brands and do not engage directly with consumers. Their sole competitive advantages are massive production capacity and low-cost labor. They manufacture products in factories in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta for companies such as Walmart, Nike and Apple, earning only meager processing fees.

At this stage, there are no star enterprises, only countless anonymous factories. They are the foundation of globalization and the group hidden behind the scenes. The only examples are those hidden champions that continue to manufacture for overseas brands to this day.

This is the prelude to China's overseas ventures, as well as a history of primitive capital accumulation. Although positioned at the bottom of the value chain, it has forged the world's most powerful and flexible supply chain system, which laid an unshakable foundation for all subsequent stories of going global. Without the backbreaking labor of the 1.0, there would be nothing that followed.

The Second Stage: Going Global 2.0: The Awakening Era of Brand Internationalization

The financial crisis has torn fissures in the global market, while also providing Chinese companies with the opportunity to present their credentials. A cohort of forward-thinking players has begun to realize that without a brand, one will forever remain vulnerable targets at others’ mercy.

The core model at this stage is technology-driven with a focus on cost-effectiveness.

Chinese companies have begun placing their logos on their products, offering items that rival international brands through technological innovation and meticulous cost control.

For example, Huawei has leveraged its substantial investment in research and development to aggressively capture market share from Ericsson and Cisco, Lenovo secured the top position in the global PC market through its acquisition of IBM PC business, Haier and TCL have established Chinese home appliances on the international stage through reliable quality and a global distribution network.

For example, take emerging technology leaders such as Xiaomi and DJI. Xiaomi not only sells smartphones but also leverages the IoT ecosystem strategy to maximize the advantages of the Chinese supply chain. DJI, on the other hand, uses its absolute technological superiority to directly define the entirely new category of consumer drones.

Overseas brands that dominate niche verticals one by one are also the evolutionary products of the 2.0.

The founders of these brands are often industry veterans or tech enthusiasts, possessing understanding in a specific niche that far exceeds that of the average person. They have observed that many traditional industries in overseas markets have remained stagnant for decades, with slow product iterations and user pain points largely ignored.

They do not aim to disrupt the entire industry, instead, they use a hyper-optimized flagship product to precisely carve out high-value, high-profit niche markets, much like a sharp surgical knife. This strategy requires enterprises to achieve extreme vertical deepening in research and development, supply chain management and user insights. Once successful, it can quickly establish a formidable moat of category equals brand, deterring latecomer imitators.

This is the first time Chinese enterprises have appeared on the global stage as challengers, competing alongside international giants. They have learned marketing, brand building, and channel management. At this stage, refining technology and products to the utmost became the benchmark.

Today, we have entered the era of 3.0: the age of ecosystem-oriented globalization. The new generation of dark horses has a completely different approach and ambition. They are no longer content with merely selling individual products, instead, they aim to export an entire system and model.

The First Path: Category Disruptor

This is the evolved version of the cost-performance breakthrough in the 2.0 era.

These companies are no longer content with focusing deeply on a single vertical, instead, they are committed to creating a platform for producing hit products.

Their core competency lies in technological innovation and a precise understanding of consumer needs to create a blockbuster product in a specific niche, quickly capturing the market and establishing brand recognition. Once successful, they do not stop there, instead, they seek to replicate this methodology across other related verticals, forming a brand matrix composed of multiple blockbuster products. The formidable aspect of this approach is its replicability and scale effect, which transforms occasional success into inevitable growth.

Anker Innovations is a typical example. Supported by its well-known “shallow sea strategy”, it has grown from a company that started out as a portable charger manufacturer has expanded into audio devices, home automation, security and other areas. What Anker aims to sell is no longer a single product, but a sophisticated system for creating blockbuster hits.

The Second Path: Cultural Alchemist

The core of the Cultural Alchemist lies in the new generation of brands no longer rigidly exporting Chinese style, but rather modernizing and trendifying elements of Eastern culture, creating a new aesthetic system that resonates with young people around the world.

The rise of this model marks a qualitative shift in the confidence of Chinese brands. They are no longer content to act as silent manufacturers, but have begun to strive to become definers of global pop culture.

Successful cultural alchemists have all done one thing right: deconstruction and reconstruction. They break down Chinese cultural elements (such as cuteness, tea and martial arts), extract the core values that can trigger cross-cultural resonance (such as collection, wellness and strength), and then repackage them in a modern, globalized commercial language (such as blind boxes, new-style tea drinks and video games).

The success of this model requires the founding team to possess an exceptional sense of aesthetics and a profound understanding of global youth culture. What they are selling is not a product, but a sense of identity and emotional connection.

For example, the success of Pop Mart is not directly related to the export of Chinese culture. It is more like the creation of a globally popular culture based on the concepts of collecting obsession and the thrill of surprise (blind box mechanism). The long queues in front of CHAGEE in New York's Times Square are not a result of replicating traditional tea houses, but rather by positioning New Chinese tea drinks as a counterpart to Starbucks, transforming tea drinking into a global trendy lifestyle.

The Third Path: Ecological Creators

These enterprises no longer export specific products or brands, instead, they export platforms, infrastructure and business models themselves.

They will channel the extreme efficiency, ultra-low costs and refined operational capabilities honed in China, the world's most complex and competitive market, into a methodology that can be directly applied to any market globally.

Whether it is the fully managed model in e-commerce or the capacity scheduling algorithm in instant delivery, considered standard operations in China, are seen as disruptive forces in many overseas markets. They do not directly interact with end consumers, yet they serve as the lifeline and operating system for all global brands. By controlling the underlying infrastructure, they ultimately gain control over the entire ecosystem.

For example, Jitu Express is attempting to transform its domestic efficiency into an overseas standard. In the first half of 2025, its parcel volume in Southeast Asia grew by 57.9%, indicating its aim to export a cost-optimized growth model. After Meituan Keeta reached the top of the market in Hong Kong in just ten months, it swiftly entered four Middle Eastern countries, aiming to export China's most mature instant delivery system. The fully managed model of major cross-border e-commerce platforms is, in essence, also a form of model export.

The Fourth Path: Opportunities in Emerging Markets for Gold Prospectors

As competition in mature markets such as Europe and the United States intensifies, and geopolitical risks increase, an increasing number of Chinese companies are turning their attention to emerging markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

These markets typically feature large demographic dividends, rapidly increasing internet penetration and insufficient local competition, providing Chinese enterprises with substantial opportunities for growth.

The Gold Prospectors here is more flexible. They may either transfer mature models that have been proven domestically, such as social e-commerce and live-stream sales, or leverage China's strong supply chain advantages to provide more cost-effective products and services for the local market. The core of this strategy lies in speed and precision—rapidly identifying market gaps and quickly filling them with targeted products or services. This is a battle of efficiency, testing a company's market sensitivity, rapid decision-making ability and local execution capability.

Transsion, known as the King of Africa, did not compete head-on in the highly competitive European and American markets. Instead, it focused on cultivating the African market in depth, developing products tailored to local user needs—such as selfie beauty optimization for dark skin tones, multi-SIM multi-standby functionality and ultra-long battery life, and ultimately capturing half of the African mobile phone market share.

From 1.0's selling labor, to 2.0's selling brands and to 3.0's selling ecosystems, the path of Chinese enterprises toward globalization is an evolutionary history of continuously climbing upward and rewriting their destiny.

Of course, this eventful collective expedition was by no means a smooth journey. Regulatory tightening spells localized deep waters and geopolitical black swans. Each posed a potentially fatal challenge.

But this cannot stop the wheel of history from rolling forward.

Who will be the next dark horse to break into overseas markets? The answer has already become apparent.

It will no longer be an isolated brand, but an ecological species. It could be a disruptor excelling across multiple verticals, an alchemist leading global aesthetics or an ecosystem built by Chinese enterprises themselves.

In this ultimate global competition, Chinese companies are no longer content with merely being excellent players. They are transforming from participants in globalization into strategists. 

This game is grander and more thrilling than ever before.