[WSJで英語学習！]米国ブランドを凌駕する中国ブランドの現状とは？[6分動画]

[Music] This may look just like your regular American fast food restaurant with a meal that comes with a burger, fries, and a drink. But if you look closely, the wrapper proudly declares that this burger has been made in China. I'm sitting in Tasan, China's answer to McDonald's. As you can see, it has all this language here: "Made in China," "a Chinese burger for a Chinese stomach." You can see that they've just got all sorts of Chinese imagery around, a little bit of McDonald's transported to Imperial era China. Tasan is just one example of a Chinese brand squeezing out US rivals.

China once presented a huge opportunity for American brands, but now local challengers are eating their lunch, threatening the dominance they have held for decades. China is the world's second-largest consumer market. The country's more than 1 billion shoppers were once seen as an untapped gold mine for Western brands. This is Beijing's premier shopping district, and you don't have to look far to see which companies have taken center stage. There are American brands all around me. Over here, we've got Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford, and right behind me is perhaps the best known of all the brands, Apple.

In the first quarter of 2024, Apple saw its smartphone sales fall 19%, while its Chinese rival Huawei Technologies saw its sales rise 70%. For China, Apple saw its revenue fall by 8% to $16.4 billion. Apple isn't the only American company that's been struggling a bit more in China lately. From luxury cosmetics firm Estee Lauder, which is expecting sales in China to fall, to retail giant Walmart, which has closed more stores nationwide over the past 5 years, executives of some of America's biggest brand names in China are increasingly worried about their weak performance in the country. Local brands are expanding so rapidly in China that any CEO worried about performance and profits is going to feel threatened by them. We have seen stock prices fall. Nike's stock prices, for example, have fallen on the back of weakening performance in China.

China once represented almost a fifth of global sales for Nike, which has long dominated China's sportswear market. But that's changing. Younger Chinese consumers are increasingly gravitating towards brands that incorporate elements of traditional Chinese culture and style, allowing brands like Anta to make inroads in a market long dominated by Nike and other Western brands. Chinese consumers are trying new brands like Anta on for size, and in many cases, they aren't going back. As a sponsor of the Chinese Olympic team, Anta has found a place among Chinese shoppers as a brand that matches growing nationalist sentiment and supports the new generation of Chinese Olympic athletes. It is very much linked to big and bold expressions of Chinese pride, with large logos and red and yellow color combinations. It's resonating especially with younger consumers today because they don't have the same level of adoration for the West as past generations. It's not about blindly buying something from the West just because it's from the West.

American brands have reaped huge profits by capitalizing on changing Chinese consumer tastes. Starbucks largely created China's new coffee culture in a country long dominated by tea drinkers. But that supremacy is now under threat. At the end of 2023, Luckin Coffee surpassed Starbucks as China's biggest coffee chain by sales and units. Analysts credit Luckin's success to its operating model, which requires minimal staff to run their branches. Luckin prices its coffee at a substantial discount, often up to 50% less than Starbucks. There's a price war going on with coffee brands, but Starbucks has largely avoided that, committing to their premium offering and focusing on what they do best. This should be the way for many of these American brands who feel threatened because you don't want your brand identity to get lost as you follow the trend. Starbucks executives insist they won't cut prices as the company positions itself as a superior brand, but sales for Starbucks have dropped 8% during the first quarter of this year while Luckin's have surged 41%. This contributed to the company lowering its forecast for the rest of the year. The announcement spooked the market, causing Starbucks' share price to plummet in May.

The US coffee giant still has plans to make China its biggest market, but it's now in a race to win wallets. In 2023, Starbucks opened nearly 900 new stores across China, bringing its total in the country to almost 7,000. But in that same year alone, Luckin opened more stores than the entire Starbucks operation in the country and now has nearly 19,000 locations. Luckin is expanding rapidly in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where Starbucks might not have a big presence. It's really forging its own brand story in a way that resonates with the new middle classes.

American brands have had a near free run at the Chinese market for decades, but that's coming to an end. To lose out on China is a huge missed opportunity, not just in terms of dollars but in terms of cementing your brand presence in one of the largest consumer markets in the world. What was once an enormous opportunity for American companies could come back to bite them as Chinese rivals chip away at their market dominance.

But of course, the real question with this Chinese burger is not whether it is very Chinese or very American; it's about whether it tastes good. [Music]