Global brands including Coca-Cola, Adidas, Apple and L'Oréal reported double-digit or near double-digit gains in China in their latest quarterly earnings, making the Chinese market a major driver of their businesses. Analysts said that Chinese consumer market resilience has not changed, offering these international companies more room for growth. Coca-Cola said that second-quarter revenues rose by 7% to USD13.38 billion and net income rose by 17% to USD4.438 billion. Sports brand Adidas posted record quarterly sales on July 30, with currency-neutral revenues up by 14% to €6.7 billion. Currency-neutral sales in Greater China rose 15% in the quarter and 16% in the first half. Apple reported that Greater China region revenue rose by 22% to reach USD18.816 billion. CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that the iPhone set a June-quarter record in the Greater China region and the Mac had its best quarter ever. Cosmetic brand L'Oréal reported that the North Asia region was the biggest growth contributor for its Professional Products Division.
Zhang Yi, CEO of iMedia Research noted that global brands need to localize at the market's speed. “Today's winners were themselves under pressure a few years ago, he noted, forced to adapt to sugar-free drinks, new social platforms and the expansion of young consumers born after 2000," Zhang said. Some companies credited localization more than market size. Coca-Cola's statement said that it reformulated its U.S.-origin Sprite + Tea with a lemon-forward profile for Chinese consumers. Swire Coca-Cola brought green and smart production bases in Kunshan and Guangzhou online in May, with combined investment of CNY3.25 billion. Adidas said that many lifestyle apparel products are now designed and sourced locally. Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said that the policy of sourcing and developing locally was paying off, enabling it to achieve "extremely strong" 15% sales growth in Greater China region. “Foreign companies can no longer treat China simply as a contract factory – their sensitivity to the market would be far from sufficient,” Zhang said. China should become an R&D source for these companies, he said.
China attracted CNY402.14 billion in foreign investment in the first half of 2026, with 31,617 new foreign-invested enterprises were established, up 5.3%, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said. Li Yong, Executive Council Member of the China Society for WTO Studies, called the shift an evolving trend, citing Chinese market capacity “very hard for other economies to replicate or match.” However, a few traditional automakers including BMW and Mercedes-Benz reported sharp business declines in China – a contrast that analysts said reflects growing auto market competition.
Li attributed the gap to the pace of tech transformation. China listed electric vehicles as a “development direction in its auto planning" as early as 2010, he noted, but for many traditional carmakers, giving up an advantage built over the past decades to embrace EV is “genuinely a difficult choice.” Legacy strength, he said, can itself become a “burden in transition.” Zhang cautioned against generalizing. “Not all carmakers are doing badly as Tesla has performed well in China,” he said, adding that BYD, Geely and the Huawei-enabled auto ecosystem have done well. Li said that Volkswagen and General Motors, now moving toward EVs, “still have a chance to rise again in Chinese market,” as reported by the Global Times.
