Business | A corporate identity crisis

How Chinese is Shein?

For the fast-fashion giant, nationality has become a vexed question

A photo illustration dipicting Chinese flag is hidden behind the white ripped paper.
Illustration: Carl Godfrey
|Guangzhou

To which country does Shein belong? The online apparel giant, headquartered in Singapore, is expected to list its shares in London in the coming months. Earlier this year Donald Tang, its executive chairman, proclaimed it to be American, by virtue of its values and the fact that it makes most of its money there. Meanwhile, most of Shein’s employees are in China, where the company was founded in 2012. All this might suggest Shein is multinational, beholden to no single country. Unfortunately, the matter is not so straightforward for a firm that straddles China and the West.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “How Chinese is Shein?”

Business

November 23rd 2024

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