Only a decade ago, Chinese companies accounted for barely 1 percent of the world's largest companies and multinationals. Today, their share has grown by more than tenfold.
After mid-November, Alibaba again won the highest ecommerce sales day in history on China's Singles' Day beating last year's record by almost 40 percent – hitting some $25.4 billion.
In the United States, the 2016 combined Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales amounted to $6.5 billion, while Amazon's 2017 Prime Day sales rose to $600 million to $1 billion range. Even combined, all of these revenues account for less than one-third of Alibaba's Singles' Day sales.
In one decade, Chinese companies have captured a significant chunk of global competition, thanks to Chinese infrastructure development, savings, rising middle-class – and increasingly global sales.
Corporate behemoths in history
The British multinationals were at the peak of their power in 1914, when they controlled half of the world's stock of outward foreign direct investment (FDI).
After postwar reconstruction, European multinationals resurfaced. Coming from a continent of diverse economies, their expansion was driven by responsive national strategies, from Unilever to Philips and Ericsson. By the 1960s, British, French and German multinationals began to challenge u.s. multinationals in some sectors.
Starting in the late 1960s,Japanese challengers began to capture increasing market share from cars to consumer electronics, across industries. They benefited from falling trade barriers, improved transport and communications, and increasingly homogeneous markets.
