Former HP brand chief Siew Ting Foo warns Western marketers about China’s outbound brands

Siew Ting Foo, former global chief brand and insights officer at HP, argues that China’s most successful brands are expanding overseas not out of domestic weakness but because they have evolved into transformation-driven global competitors, and that Western marketers are only now recognising the threat.

The Year of the Horse begins on 17 February and coincides with China’s move from its 14th to its 15th Five-Year Plan. Foo describes this as a chapter in which China stops seeing itself as catching up and starts setting global benchmarks through continuous innovation backed from the top.

Beyond ‘Made in China’

The era when ‘Made in China’ meant cheap imitation is over, she writes, and cites a series of examples.

According to Foo, Pop Mart’s Labubu doll drove 1,270% growth in revenue across the Americas in Q3 2024, with a $35bn market capitalisation exceeding Hasbro and Mattel combined. BYD delivered 2.14m electric vehicles in H1 2025, and China’s total car exports are projected to rise 25% to more than 7m vehicles in 2026. MINISO runs 3,213 international stores, and ANTA’s overseas revenue has grown 150%, with a new Beverly Hills flagship placing Chinese design in Nike’s heartland.

Foo sees these as the result of what Beijing calls “New Quality Productive Forces”, an approach that organises the economy around innovation as continuous production rather than as separate research and development.

Four models

She identifies four playbooks. Value-velocity brands such as BYD cut development cycles by 70% compared with Western timelines. Innovation-export brands such as MINISO sell belonging rather than products. Local-resonance brands such as ANTA act as “startups with billion-dollar backbones”, with 20 people in Beverly Hills supported by 20,000 in China.

The fourth and most developed model is what Foo calls “Chu Hai with Soul”. Chu Hai means ‘go to sea’ in Mandarin, and these brands combine Chinese speed of innovation with Western brand discipline, building customer promises that run from cultural meaning through to pricing power.

She argues they orchestrate wide ecosystems of meaning rather than simply targeting demographics. Haier, which she describes as the world’s number one appliance brand, grows international revenue through local innovations such as air conditioners for Pakistan that run on solar power. Li-Ning’s ‘Guochao’ aesthetic travels because the national pride it expresses connects with a universal desire for authenticity, and the brand has reached parity with Adidas on brand health in China.

Chinese marketers have grasped something Western brands forgot, Foo writes: younger consumers in particular value authentic cultural connection over perfection. The “objectively ugly” Labubu became a phenomenon because of its flaws, not despite them.

The numbers

China’s domestic economy faces headwinds, with 4.8% growth in Q3 against 5.2% in Q2 and weak consumer spending. Yet Foo says Chinese brands are responding by moving steadily into international markets.

She cites the 2025 Kantar BrandZ report, which showed China’s top 100 brands rising 25% in value to $1.2tn, and notes that 36 Chinese companies listed on the NYSE in H1 2025. She quotes JD.com chairman Richard Liu: “International expansion is paramount.” According to UBS, overseas markets provide nearly half the earnings of China’s car industry while making up 20% of its revenue, a pattern she says is repeated across categories.

What Western marketers should do

Foo argues the answer is synthesis rather than imitation. This month, brands should audit themselves against the four models and identify where they are exposed. This quarter, they should map markets by cultural tensions rather than demographics. This year, they should build rapid iteration without giving up emotional brand building.

Culturally intelligent Chinese brands are already at the forefront of expansion into Latin America and Southeast Asia, she writes, and Western markets are next. While diplomats argue over tariffs, those brands are engaging customers directly through culture and meaning that go beyond price and features.

Foo concludes that Western marketers who ignore the shift risk being outpaced, while those who study and adapt will find that cultural intelligence is not a uniquely Chinese advantage but the future of global brand building.