Chinese brands are sweeping the world. Good
中国品牌正席卷全球。好

Ask a Westerner for an example of a successful Chinese consumer-goods brand, and until recently most would have struggled. Although China is the world’s premier manufacturing power, it has long lagged behind when it comes to imaginative home-grown retail brands and products, even as its factories have cranked out vast numbers of them for foreign companies. This is now changing. Innovative Chinese brands are popping up everywhere. Consumers and investors around the world stand to benefit
如果让一个西方人举一个成功的中国消费品品牌的例子，直到最近，他们大多数人都会感到困难。尽管中国是全球领先的制造业大国，但在创意本土零售品牌和产品方面，它长期以来一直落后于人，即使其工厂为外国公司生产了大量此类产品。现在这种情况正在改变。创新的中国品牌随处可见。全球的消费者和投资者都将从中受益

From Stockholm to Sydney, the electric car gliding silently by is increasingly likely to be Chinese. Mixue, a purveyor of ice-cream and cold drinks, has dethroned McDonald’s as the world’s largest fast-food chain by number of outlets. It is expanding in South America, as is Meituan, a Beijing-based delivery app. Chagee, a chain of tea shops, is on track to have at least 1,300 stores outside China by the end of 2027, mainly in South-East Asia; a few years ago it had barely any. And Pop Mart, a Chinese toymaker, has created a buzz worthy of Disney around its strange grinning (or are they grimacing?) nine-toothed dolls, called Labubus. Fans include Rihanna, a pop star, and Sir David Beckham, a retired footballer.
从斯德哥尔摩到悉尼，滑行而过的电动汽车越来越可能是中国品牌。喜瑞是一家冰淇淋和冷饮供应商，已经取代麦当劳成为全球最大的快餐连锁店（按门店数量计算），并正在南美扩张。北京的送餐应用美团也在扩张。茶馆连锁 Chagee 计划到 2027 年底在海外至少拥有 1300 家门店，主要集中在东南亚；几年前它几乎没有任何海外门店。而中国玩具制造商泡泡玛特则围绕其奇怪的咧嘴笑（或者说是龇牙咧嘴？）的九齿娃娃 Labubu，制造了堪比迪士尼的热度，粉丝包括歌手蕾哈娜和已退役的足球运动员大卫·贝克汉姆。

Western shoppers have bought goods made in China for decades. But these were largely made for, and designed by, foreign firms. More recently, internet retailers such as Shein and Temu have won over customers with cheap, cheerful clothes and consumer goods, while downplaying their Chinese origins. Chinese brands were long seen as poor-quality, unimaginative and unfairly subsidised. Scandals around food safety and labour standards did not help.
西方消费者已经购买了中国制造的商品数十年。但这些商品大多是为外国公司制造和设计的。近年来，Shein 和 Temu 等网络零售商凭借便宜且令人愉悦的服装和消费品赢得了顾客，同时淡化了它们的中国背景。长期以来，中国品牌被认为质量差、缺乏创意且不公平地得到了补贴。食品安全和劳工标准方面的丑闻也没有帮助。

New firms are now overturning those old assumptions. Many happily advertise their roots. The logo of Chagee shows a Peking Opera singer in full headdress. (The firm’s name derives from “Farewell, My Concubine”, a traditional Chinese opera.) “Black Myth: Wukong”, one of the most successful video games ever, features the Monkey King from “Journey to the West”, a 16th-century novel. Many brands now compete on quality as well as price. Chagee’s drinks can be as costly as Starbucks’. Chinese EVs offer dazzling entertainment systems as well as low prices. Pop Mart’s toys can cost as much as $835.
新公司现在正在推翻这些旧有假设。许多公司乐意展示自己的根源。Chagee 的 logo 展示了一位穿着全套戏服的京剧演员。（该公司名称源自传统中国戏曲《霸王别姬》。）“黑神话：悟空”是迄今为止最成功的视频游戏之一，游戏中出现了《西游记》中的孙悟空。许多品牌现在不仅在价格上竞争，还在质量上竞争。Chagee 的饮料价格可以和星巴克相媲美。中国电动车提供令人眼花缭乱的娱乐系统，同时价格低廉。Pop Mart 的玩具价格可以高达 835 美元。

In the past, Chinese firms typically succeeded by learning to replicate Western products cheaply. Now they are accumulating valuable intellectual property of their own. And though state media outlets laud Labubus, the government does little to subsidise these new consumer firms (with the exception of electric-carmakers). Indeed, China’s capital markets, which are tasked with nurturing technologies to beat America, are stacked against them. Consumer firms have received only 3% of the capital raised in listings on the mainland over the past two years. Chipmakers have taken five times as much.
过去，中国公司通常通过廉价复制西方产品来取得成功。现在，它们正在积累自己的宝贵知识产权。尽管官方媒体赞扬 Labubus，但政府几乎没有补贴这些新兴消费品公司（除了电动车制造商）。事实上，负责培育能够击败美国的技术的中国资本市场对它们不利。过去两年里，消费品公司在内地上市所筹集的资金中仅占 3%。芯片制造商则获得了五倍于此的资金。

The rise of Chinese consumer brands is good for shoppers everywhere: they now have a wider array of innovative products to choose from. Investors, too, should welcome the sight of oddly mesmerising dolls and the taste of red-bean ice-cream. Investing in Chinese technology companies has long been politically hard because of security worries on both sides. If DeepSeek, China’s breakthrough AI firm, were to go public, American investors would be unlikely to get a piece of the action. And TikTok is still stuck in legal limbo. But handbags and hot drinks are harmless. Even as the trade war erupted in April, Chagee went public in New York, raising more than $400m to fuel its global expansion. Many more brands have listed in Hong Kong, or plan to do so.

Western firms will have to wake up and smell the bubble tea. Within China, the premium that foreign brands command simply for being foreign is eroding. In the future they will need to try harder to understand Chinese customers’ particular tastes. Some may even do deals with inventive Chinese partners, to gain insight and inspiration. These are still early days for Chinese marques’ foray into global markets. But Chinese carmakers are already forcing Western rivals to reconsider their strategies. And competition from China may eventually push Disney, Mattel and other Western mega-brands to new heights of creativity. Chinese brands’ westward journey, like the Monkey King’s, could bring lavish rewards. ■

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