China’s Private Firms Accelerate Global Integration
China’s private enterprises are accelerating their integration into global markets, moving beyond simple product exports toward brand, technology, standards, and ecosystem globalisation, according to a Xinhua feature published on Friday. The trend was on full display at the 2026 China Private Enterprise Investment and Financing Conference, held in the northern port city of Tianjin on 22-23 September, which for the first time devoted a dedicated session to helping private firms “go global with high quality.”
Newly released figures underscore the scale of the shift. In 2025, the top 500 Chinese private enterprises posted combined overseas operating revenue of RMB 3.70 trillion (about USD 520 billion), up 11.23 percent year-on-year, while their year-end overseas assets reached RMB 2.86 trillion, up 17.61 percent, according to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce’s 2026 survey report.
A Maturing Footprint
The broader national picture is equally striking. According to the joint 2025 Statistical Bulletin on China’s Outbound Direct Investment released by the Ministry of Commerce, the National Bureau of Statistics, and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and reported by People’s Daily, China’s OFDI flows reached USD 213.58 billion in 2025, an increase of 11.1 percent, while the country’s investment stock hit USD 3.4 trillion — keeping it among the global top three for a ninth consecutive year and raising its share of worldwide investment to 7.4 percent. By the end of 2025, China had 58,000 enterprises operating abroad across 189 countries and regions, employing a total of 4.761 million people, including 2.965 million foreign nationals.
Those numbers are increasingly driven by private, non-state firms. At the Tianjin conference — jointly hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Tianjin Municipal People’s Government under the theme “Scenario Innovation, Sci-Tech-Finance Synergy” — companies described a transition from exporting goods to building integrated overseas operations.
Chen Han, vice president of the electric-vehicle maker XPeng Group, said the company’s business now covers 79 countries and regions, with localised knock-down production projects in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Austria, alongside overseas R&D centres. The result, he said, is a global layout spanning production, research, sales, and service.
For Mingyuan Silk Road (Tianjin) Industrial Co., which operates a free-trade special zone in Uzbekistan, the priority is financing. “This time I’ve come to look for more financing and cooperation opportunities for Chinese enterprises in the zone,” said Li Wenming, who returned from Uzbekistan to attend the conference. The company built a glass factory in Uzbekistan in 2016 — the first enterprise to settle in the Jizzakh Industrial Park — and now runs a comprehensive industrial park with local employees making up more than 70 percent of its workforce.
From “Going Out” to “Going In”
Huang Jinhui, chairman of the board of Liananda International, argued that going global “is by no means simply selling products overseas,” but rather requires full-lifecycle management spanning market research, project landing, daily operations, and capital operations.
The conference’s dedicated “going global” session, held on 23 September, connected service resources from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe for matchmaking and compliance guidance, aiming to help private firms diversify markets and spread cross-border risks, according to reporting by Jinyun. The main conference followed a “1+4+N” structure, with sessions focused on scenario innovation, sci-tech finance, high-growth “Nezha” enterprises, brain-computer interfaces, green low-carbon industry, and robotics, according to a People’s Daily conference notice.
Policy Shifts From Incentives to Ecosystems
The expansion is being supported by a rapidly maturing government service infrastructure. In October 2025, China issued the Guiding Opinions on Further Improving the Overseas Comprehensive Service System, jointly issued by five departments, proposing a three-dimensional, full-chain service ecosystem combining central-local coordination, resource aggregation, and internal-external connectivity. In July 2026, the State Council Regulations on Overseas Investment took effect, providing what officials describe as a stable, transparent, and predictable institutional framework.
Ge Wei, rotating secretary-general of the China Association for the Promotion of International Multinational Corporations, said the policies mean China is mobilising government resources and social forces to jointly support enterprises going global.
Local governments are building their own layered infrastructure. Zhejiang has created an overseas comprehensive service platform offering “one platform, one window, comprehensive service” for outbound investment; Shanghai has integrated existing platform resources into a unified city-wide “going global” service platform; and Shenzhen has developed the “Go-Global e-Station” covering product, investment, and service scenarios.
In the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, the China North (TEDA) One-Stop Going-Global Service Base provided full-chain support that helped Yifei Zhikong (Tianjin) Technology Co. complete two orders to South Korea worth USD 1.5 million in May 2025, using air freight instead of sea freight to achieve “same-day delivery” and cut transport time by 70 percent.
Niu Jianbo, deputy director of the Institute of Modern Management at Nankai University, said the improving system showed government support had shifted from “giving policies” to “building ecosystems.” “When enterprises are no longer troubled by issues such as visas, taxation, and foreign exchange, they can put more energy into technology export, talent cultivation, and ecosystem building, achieving the transition from ‘going out’ to ‘going in,’” he said.
What to Watch
The Tianjin conference took place in the first year of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan and the same year the Tianjin Private Economy Promotion Regulations took effect, reflecting a deliberate push to position the city as a hub for private-sector outbound expansion. Corporate examples cited in the Xinhua report are diverse: Midea Group supplying affordable dishwashers in Egypt, Huayou Cobalt running a joint technical academy in Zimbabwe, and XPeng’s multi-country manufacturing footprint.
The trajectory suggests China’s private enterprises are evolving from participants in global markets into builders of supply chains and industrial ecosystems. The key question in the coming year is whether the government’s service infrastructure can keep pace with the increasingly complex compliance, financing, and localisation demands of firms expanding across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. If the 2025 data is any guide, the momentum appears likely to continue.