In what The Economist describes as a “rewiring of global manufacturing” underway, China is emerging as a significant innovator, with Chinese companies growing their global supply chains at “breakneck speed.”
In the past three years alone, Chinese companies have spent more than $200 billion building overseas factories.
But the changes are more wide-ranging than simply investing in manufacturing. The Economist says the character of Chinese companies’ supply chains is also changing, in three ways. First, they are spread more widely, with major production nodes in nearly every region of the globe. Second, they have grown deeper, with many Chinese suppliers following manufacturers into new sites, replicating the tight-knit ecosystems at home. Third, they are increasingly dominated by strategic industries, from electric vehicles and clean energy to hardware for data-centers.
Chinese industrial parks, ports and airports are springing up all over, from Saudi Arabia and Hungary to Brazil and Indonesia.
The apparently insatiable expansion is being driven by various factors. Growth in the domestic China consumer market has stalled, turning up the heat on local competition. New geographical markets appeal, not least because the tariffs introduced by the second Trump administration have incentivized production in places with less punitive levies than historic Chinese outposts such as Vietnam.
That latter factor may be losing some of its appeal, however. On August 13, the Trump administration published a report entitled “The Great Transshipment Scam,” The report claims that more than 40 countries have helped China evade U.S. tariffs by routing exports through nations with those lower levies, and vowed to crack down on the practice.