On the traffic-snarled streets of Hanoi, taxi drivers taking a break between rides watch Chinese microdramas—feature-length stories divided into addictive 90-second clips—on their phones. Some commuters zip past on Chinese-made Yadea scooters, while others sit comfortably removed from the noise, dust, and tropical heat in any one of half a dozen new Chinese electric vehicle brands. At home, teenagers message each other on Zalo, a Vietnamese app similar to China’s WeChat (and whose parent company counts WeChat maker Tencent as a major foreign investor), or shop on the Alibaba-run Lazada e-commerce platform.

What is happening in Vietnam is occurring across the developing world. Chinese brands and products are becoming as common today as American brands such as Levi’s, Marlboro, and McDonald’s were in the 1980s and 1990s. In South Africa, Hisense televisions, washing machines, and other appliances are top sellers; in Brazil, the electronics pioneer Xiaomi has become a household name, while the newly arrived milk tea and ice cream chain Mixue is drawing large crowds and is set to massively expand its presence in the country. The United States and the brands associated with it today, such as Apple and Tesla, still carry enormous prestige. But most American products are out of the reach of ordinary consumers. China is becoming the country that provides the goods and services that are part of people’s daily lives.

The omnipresence of Chinese products is expanding the country’s influence in ways Beijing could only dream of. Many people in the developing world, especially young people, are increasingly associating China with modernity and progress. But this ubiquity is not the result of a strategic calculation made by officials in Beijing. Rather, it is driven by private companies seeking profits. The brutal competition that Chinese firms confront in their domestic market is pushing them to aggressively enter Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where they have moved quickly to localize their offerings and embed themselves in everyday activities. Companies trying to survive the effects of China’s growth model at home are giving the country the kind of positive association abroad that Beijing has been unable to generate from its own top-down efforts.

This success, however, has not made China’s economic model healthy or benign. The excessive competition that Chinese firms face erodes their profits and weakens the foundations for long-term innovation. Chinese firms are building a global reputation for making everyday life cheaper, easier, and smoother. Yet the domestic pressures that make Chinese firms so aggressive abroad are also limiting their ability to make China the truly innovative superpower that Beijing aspires to be.

CHINA, CHINA, EVERYWHERE

Chinese officials have struggled for years to shape foreign perceptions of their country. State media, propaganda, cultural exchanges, and language programs have failed to reach large international audiences. Beijing tried to promote Chinese language and culture through its Confucius Institutes at universities in Australia, Europe, and North America; in the past decade, however, most of these have been shuttered over concerns about academic freedom and a lack of transparency. More coercive tactics, including pressuring critics and censoring dissenting views overseas, have backfired. In 2025, Chinese pressure forced organizers to suspend the IndieChina Film Festival in New York, drawing attention to the long arm of Beijing’s censorship apparatus.

China’s private entrepreneurs, however, are developing the country’s brand through commerce. In 2025, China exported roughly $1.6 trillion worth of goods to developing economies, about 50 percent more than it sold to the United States and western Europe combined. Private firms accounted for nearly 60 percent of China’s total foreign trade. In areas as varied as appliances, apps, cars, roads, ports, and phones, Chinese brands are increasingly everywhere in the developing world.

Chinese companies have not succeeded simply because they are dumping their surplus product.

As Chinese companies expand, the country is becoming associated with things that make daily life easier. When a country’s products, services, and infrastructure become ubiquitous, they begin to shape how people imagine competence, modernity, and possibility. That was true for more than half a century during which American products dominated. It is........

© Foreign Affairs