Global Competitors? Mapping the Internationalization Strategies of Chinese Digital Platform Firms

The recent emergence of Chinese digital platform firms whose size rivals that of the US platform giants has attracted much popular interest. Given the size and increasing technical sophistication of these firms, there has been increasing interest in whether they have developed sufficient capacities and resources to become global-class competitors for the reigning US platform giants. We assembled a database of all overseas operations of the Chinese platform firms. Nine of them as have foreign operations, with Tencent and Alibaba being the most important offshore investors. We describe the globalization patterns of these firms and analyze the strengths and obstacles to their globalization. Their globalization has proceeded on a number of vectors: First, these firms, with a few exceptions, when they have global strategies, have largely invested in firms with useful technology or content. Another common strategy has been to follow Chinese customers abroad. Second, Chinese firms have made equity investments in a number of foreign domestic internet firms. And yet, in nearly all foreign markets, Chinese websites and apps still trail US firms in market share and salience. Finally, Chinese investments are concentrated investments in proximate countries, Chinese platform firms, while having some state-of-the-art technologies, have a far smaller foreign presence than do their US competitors. Finally, we consider the implications of our research for discussions of whether emerging nation multinational firms require new theories for explaining their globalization