No Longer Just the World’s Factory: China’s Companies Are Leading Innovation and Building Global Brands

Dr Wealth recently held a face-to-face seminar on the US and China—not so much on their strained relations, but on an emerging trend: the weakening of the US from a fiscal and Dollar supremacy standpoint, and the growing strength of China.

We won’t dive into the US side here, as that's beyond the scope of Growth Dragons. Instead, I’ll highlight some of the key points we shared in the presentation.

The main purpose was to shine a light on the phenomenal progress of Chinese companies and challenge the negative bias that continues to surround them. It’s striking that even with stronger fundamentals and better growth in some cases, Chinese companies still trade at a significant discount compared to their US counterparts.

In the past few years, Chinese firms have gone global. They’re no longer just selling to Chinese consumers, nor are they merely the world's factory making products for American brands. They’re building their own brands, exporting directly, and innovating at the forefront of global technology. They're not just copying anymore—they're leading.

And once these companies begin to lead, a familiar pattern emerges: US policymakers introduce new rules to curb their expansion.

Let’s dive into the examples we shared.

#1 From BAT to BAHT: China’s New Big Tech Order

Back in the FANG era, China had its own BAT—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. But Baidu has since lost its tech titan status. Today, Alibaba and Tencent remain standing, but they’ve been joined by two private giants: ByteDance and Huawei—forming what we call BAHT.

ByteDance shocked even seasoned observers with $155 billion in revenue in 2024, more than Alibaba or Tencent.