Chinese Brands Are Taking The Global Economy By Storm

Chinese stocks have taken a big hit from the trade war, with the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index FXI down 13.8% in the past year. While Chinese investors are enduring a near-term dip in the stock market, Chinese brands are growing like wildfire on the international front.

BrandZ recently released its Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list for 2019. This year, there were nine new entrants into the top 100, and four of them were Chinese brands.

New Names

Didi Chuxing is a ride-hailing and transportation sharing app headquartered in Beijing that had more than 550 million users as of 2018.

Meituan is an online-to-offline e-commerce service platform with 600 million users and 4.5 million business partners throughout China.

Xiaomi is the fourth-largest global smartphone maker.

Haier is a multinational consumer electronics and home appliance maker that produces products such as air conditioners, mobile phones and computers.

In addition to the newcomers on this year’s list, Chinese tech giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA and Tencent Holdings TCEHY maintained their respective positions within the 10 most valuable global brands.

Alibaba is China’s most valuable brand, increasing in value by 16% in the past year and coming in at No. 7 on the list. Despite its impressive growth and dominance in the Chinese market, Alibaba shares are down 23.5% in the past year.

Tencent’s brand value dropped 27% in the past year, but it still rank’s No. 8 on the list at $130.9 billion.

Impressive Chinese Growth

American brands Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, Apple, Inc. AAPL and Alphabet, Inc. GOOG GOOGL subsidiary Google take the top three slots on this year’s list, but the evidence indicates China is coming on strong. As recently as 2006, only one Chinese brand was included among the world’s top 100 brands. That number has now grown to 16.

“Disruptive ecosystem models are flourishing in regions such as Asia, where consumers are more technology-enabled and where brands are integrating themselves into every aspect of people’s daily lives,” said Doreen Wang, Kantar’s Global Head of BrandZ.

The impressive growth in Chinese and American brands is coming in spite of the trade war. Growth in the overall value of the top 100 global brands slowed to just 7% in the past 12 months. That slowdown is due in large part to fallout from trade war tariffs and an erosion in consumer confidence, BrandZ said.

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