It would've been nice if the article covered the successes and failures of the Chinese corp's international operations. If you look at Alibaba, they have been very active in acquiring international companies to compliment their homegrown international offerings. Aliexpress & Alipay are both international offerings. They bought Lazada to cover Southeast Asia ecommerce. And they are trying to buy a large US remittance company in MoneyGram. I'm sure there are many others.
My point is, yes, they enjoy large advantage in mainland that could possibly make it hard for them overseas. But has it actually? Are they failing or succeeding?
Completely agree with you. The article looks at just a few companies and use them to claim Chinese brands as a whole won't succeed internationally ever. Very myopic.
The conclusion would be different if the author analyzed Chinese smartphone brands instead. Five years ago, even the domestic market was dominated by foreign brands like HTC and Samsung; now the domestic market is the complete opposite. Looking at the supply chain, back then all China provided was low-paid final assembly. Now, Chinese companies are very competitive in supplying most of the parts: displays, camera modules, fingerprint scanners, enclosures, sound components, RF components, batteries, SOC, etc. Only high-end semiconductor components (RAM, NAND, application processors) are lacking but Chinese industrial policy will rapidly help this area catch up.
Chinese smartphones (phones with a Chinese brand not just manufactured there) have seen massive success internationally in the past couple of years and now make up HALF of global marketshare. In India, OnePlus has higher customer loyalty and sales than Apple in the high-end and Xiaomi is neck in neck with Samsung as the marketshare leader starting from zero two years ago.
Now remember, all of this happened in just the last five years. What other industries will break out in the next 5 years?
My point is, yes, they enjoy large advantage in mainland that could possibly make it hard for them overseas. But has it actually? Are they failing or succeeding?