
From Temu to Shein and from TikTok to BYD, several companies with Chinese origins have burst onto the global stage in recent years. Now more are following in their footsteps, especially in the consumer tech sector.
While chuhai (出海 or ‘going overseas’) has been a buzzword among Chinese entrepreneurs and businesses since the start of this decade, companies are pursuing the strategy with greater urgency amid China’s economic slowdown.
“For a long time, there really wasn’t a whole lot of incentive [for Chinese companies] to undertake all the struggles and the complications that go along with expanding overseas,” says Nicholas Borst, director of China research at the San Francisco-based Seafarer Capital Partners. “That logic for a lot of companies has changed, driven by the sense that domestic opportunities in China may not be as good as they were a few years ago and the economy is likely to grow slower.”

Though China’s annual exports fell by 4.6 percent in dollar terms in 2023, its shipments of home appliances defied the broader trend, increasing by nearly 10 percent, according to customs data. Some 1,115 Chinese companies showcased their products at the Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s biggest tech convention, in Las Vegas last month, more than double the number last year and a quarter of all exhibitors.
“Chinese companies are creating their product, building their brand, establishing a local team in their overseas markets and operating themselves,” says Chris Pereira, founder of iMpact, a New York-based consultancy that advises Chinese companies expanding abroad. The trend represents a significant pivot from the last four decades, when China became the world’s factory mostly by supplying foreign brands, he adds.

And while state-owned companies may have led the charge in the past, smaller and medium sized enterprises are making inroads into foreign markets, having grown more attuned to the needs of different consumers, says Yiru Qian, a Beijing-based senior analyst at the investment research firm EqualOcean.
“They no longer rely solely on low-cost competition, but emphasize product quality, innovative design, and the dissemination of brand value,” Qian says.
A prime example is Ecovacs, which started out in Suzhou in the 1990s as an original equipment manufacturer for the likes of Panasonic and Philips. More than three decades later, its own robotic vacuum cleaners, under the brand Ecovacs Robotics, hold a leading share of the Chinese market and the second largest globally.

With products that boast AI-powered navigation and object avoidance, Ecovacs Robotics has hoovered up the sales of iRobot’s Roomba, an American brand that dominated the industry for most of last decade. Newer Chinese rivals — including Anker’s eufy, the Xiaomi-backed Roborock, and the up-and-coming Dreametech — have also joined the competition. Meanwhile, Tineco, another brand launched by Ecovacs in 2018 to produce cordless floor cleaners, has become a serious contender to Dyson.
The group’s strategy has paid off handsomely: Ecovacs Robotics and Tineco saw their total revenue in overseas markets increase by 47 percent and 53 percent respectively in the third quarter of 2023, overtaking growth in their domestic markets. The international foray was led by the group’s 33-year-old chief executive David Qian Cheng, who has a degree in sociology from the University of British Columbia and took the reins from his father in 2019.
The rise of second-generation business owners like Cheng is another reason why Chinese companies have become more adept at tapping into international markets, says Pereira, of iMpact. “Those people are business savvy, they speak multiple foreign languages and have a more global perspective,” he says.
Most of the top 50 brands, see themselves not as Chinese brands, [but] as a global brand from the day they started the company.
Doreen Wang, CEO of consultancy Kantar China and global head of BrandZ
Changing perceptions of Chinese products have also aided their successful expansion, says Doreen Wang, CEO of consultancy Kantar China and global head of BrandZ, which publishes annual reports with Google on China and the world’s most valuable brands.
With inflation still relatively high, more consumers, particularly those from younger generations, are looking for products with good value for money, says Wang.
Nevertheless, many Chinese companies downplay their origins. “There’s no need to emphasize I’m from China. Instead, [the companies] must be 100 percent glocalized,” Wang says. “Most of the top 50 brands, see themselves not as Chinese brands, [but] as a global brand from the day they started the company.” Some well-known examples, such as Shein and the electronics retailer Anker, have targeted foreign consumers from inception and built their operations accordingly.
Augmented reality company XREAL (formerly known as NReal) has followed a similar strategy, having set its sights on global consumers since it began in 2017. Founder Xu Chi, a former software engineer in the Silicon Valley, nonetheless chose to start his company in China for its manufacturing capabilities and infrastructure.
“We would have to build it all from scratch, so I came back to China to assemble a global team,” Xu told The Wire China. Besides its headquarters in Beijing, the company now has offices in Japan, Korea and the U.S. in order to take on staff that could “understand the nuances and intricacies of unique markets.”
XREAL’s smart eyewear is now going head to head with Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and the Apple Vision Pro at a fraction of their prices, capturing 51 percent of the global market share in the third quarter of last year, according to the market intelligence firm International Data Corporation.
While Chinese firms often have advantages in supply chain efficiency, technological expertise and price compared to their foreign counterparts, they are weighed down by an albatross. “Chinese companies have this extra layer of baggage from all these geopolitical concerns that have to be addressed to put them on an even footing with their competitors,” says Borst, of Seafarer Capital Partners.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation, January 31, 2024. Credit: C-SPAN
Chinese businesses are often tasked with supporting national objectives, or required to comply with domestic censorship. “Those same asks can be very toxic for them as they go overseas,” says Borst, noting that Chinese companies often have to navigate competing sets of regulatory demands from Beijing and governments in their target markets.
Such forces played out at a recent congressional hearing, where U.S. senators grilled Shou Chew, the Singaporean CEO of TikTok — a subsidiary of Chinese company Bytedance — over his nationality and potential ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Given the current political environment, Chinese companies would likely draw such scrutiny regardless of the nature of their product. “The only way you can do it is really to separate yourself and basically put firewalls between parts of your business and have them operate, more or less independently,” says Borst.
That requires a high degree of operational sophistication on the company’s part. As for consumers, that means the definition of a Chinese company will be increasingly blurry.

Rachel Cheung is a staff writer for The Wire China based in Hong Kong. She previously worked at VICE World News and South China Morning Post, where she won a SOPA Award for Excellence in Arts and Culture Reporting. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review and The Atlantic, among other outlets.