Shein is at a Very Chinese Time in Its Life
More on my Tech in Asia Op-Ed, Manus, and China-shedding
In a previous piece on Calling the Shots, I wrote about the end of Shein’s China-shedding. I went a step further in my latest Tech in Asia op-ed, focusing on the IPO prospects and why Shein’s listing will proceed at a discount.
The geopolitical reality: the perception of abandonment from China’s perspective is now a deal breaker.
My editor Peter Cowan sharply stated the broader condition:
Shein’s long-running attempt to position itself as a “global company” may have reached its breaking point. As geopolitical tensions rise, firms built on Chinese industrial ecosystems are finding it harder to sustain that strategic ambiguity.
With New York and London off the table, Hong Kong has emerged as Shein’s most viable and likely only IPO option. That path comes with its own logic. If Shein lists in Hong Kong after years of presenting itself as a Singapore-based global company, the listing itself becomes an admission: offshore restructuring has limits as a strategy for escaping political scrutiny…
