The Rise of Chinese Brands: From Budget Buys to Aspirational Icons

By all conventional wisdom, this should be a terrible time for a boom in consumer brands—especially in China. The country’s economy is slowing. Youth unemployment is high at 16.9% youth unemployment (February 2025, 16 to 24 year olds).
And with the real estate sector in tatters, middle-class wealth long tethered to property is under pressure. So why, then, are Chinese consumer brands thriving?

At the heart of this paradox lies a quiet transformation in how Chinese people are spending, and more importantly, why they’re spending.

The Rise of the Smart Consumer

China’s consumers are becoming more discerning more “value-sensitive” than simply “price-sensitive.” In other words, they are no longer simply looking for the cheapest option, but for the best value for their money. And local brands are delivering that in droves.

Take the coffee wars, for example. While Starbucks once held a monopoly on the urban café experience, homegrown competitors like Cotti and Luckin have risen rapidly. Their pitch is simple: coffee that’s just as good, half the price, and more attuned to Chinese tastes and digital habits. It’s a winning formula.

Similarly, Laopu Gold, a Chinese luxury jewelry brand, has tapped into the aspirational consumer looking for elegance without the Tiffany price tag. Why pay for a foreign name when you can get equally dazzling craftsmanship, culturally resonant design, and social status at a fraction of the cost?

Even in a whimsical corner of the market like collectible toys, Pop Mart’s Labubu dolls are proving the emotional power of domestic brands. They’ve become cultural touchstones for young adults navigating economic uncertainty—adorable, affordable, and deeply expressive. “They’re cute, but they feel like they understand me,” a buyer in Shanghai was once quoted as saying. That’s not just a product strategy that’s emotional engineering.

Many Chinese brands are actually competing on premium turf.

One example is Chagee, a tea chain whose bestselling tea lattes are priced at 15–20 yuan sit shoulder to shoulder with Starbucks on price. But Chagee positions itself as culturally refined, health-conscious, and modern effectively taking the “Starbucks model” and dressing it in Chinese robes.

Then there’s the electric vehicle (EV) market, which might be the clearest signal yet that Chinese brands are moving up the value chain. The fastest-growing segment? Not the bargain-bin mini EVs. It’s the entry-level luxury market, with cars priced between 200,000–400,000 yuan ($27,000–$55,000).

This is the dawn of what we might call the “Glocal Luxury” era where global standards meet local soul. Brands that succeed in today’s China must understand that price matters, yes but story matters more.