As the US-China trade war rumbles on and relations between other liberal democracies and Beijing deteriorate due to everything from intellectual property (IP) theft to human rights violations in Xinjiang and the eroding away of Hong Kong's autonomy, many globally-renowned companies are deserting China. In fact, research firm Gartner revealed last year that a third of supply chain leaders had plans to move at least some of their manufacturing out of China before 2023. Coronavirus-related sales slumps and supply chain disruption, as well as rising production costs, have also hastened the exodus. Read on to discover which world-famous firms are partially or completely pulling out of the People's Republic. All dollar amounts in US dollars.

A study by the UBS Evidence Lab found that a staggering 76% of US companies with factories in China were in the process of or considering moving operations to other countries in 2020. They include sportswear colossus Nike. The firm's suppliers have been relocating production facilities to southeast Asia and Africa for some time now, and the company reviewed its supply chains in Xinjiang too following stories of the mistreatment of Muslim Uyghurs in the region. Swathes of Chinese people then boycotted international brands such as Nike who chose to speak out against what was happening in Xinjiang. Sales were down by 59% in April compared to the previous year as shoppers turned to domestic companies instead, according to Morningstar Inc.

Though the bulk of Apple's manufacturing will remain in China, the tech giant has been encouraging its suppliers, which include Taiwanese firm Foxconn plus Delta Electronics and Pegatron, to move up to 30% of iPhone production from China. Foxconn, for instance, is investing up to $1 billion (£762m) to expand a plant in India, while other contract manufacturers are setting up in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. Apple is also planning to have 30% of its classic AirPods produced in Vietnam instead of China, while a “significant number” of iPads were set to be produced in Vietnam as of mid-2021, according to Nikkei. That said, Vietnam has been hit particularly badly by the Delta variant of coronavirus, which has caused delays to Apple’s transition into the country.

American companies aren't the only ones beating a retreat from China. South Korea's Samsung Electronics shut its remaining smartphone factory in the country in 2019, reportedly turning the city in which it was based into a ghost town. Further closures were announced last year, with Samsung ceasing production at its last PC plant in China in August, instead moving operations to Vietnam, and the company also shuttered its only TV factory in the country last November.

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Fellow South Korean firm LG Electronics has followed in the footsteps of Samsung and relocated the manufacturing of some of its products from China. In an effort to avert hefty US tariffs, the company shifted all production of refrigerators bound for the American market from China's Zhejiang province to South Korea. 

Almost a quarter of German companies operating in China were planning to relocate production from the country in 2019, according to a report by the German Chamber of Commerce in China. For example, Adidas has halved its Chinese manufacturing since 2010, with much of the production moving to Vietnam, and pledged in July last year to cut all ties with suppliers implicated in a report that uncovered forced labour being used in some factories. Like Apple, Adidas also felt the impacts of Vietnam’s rising COVID-19 infection rate, which has stalled production since mid-July and is expected to cause losses of up to $600 million (£431m) during the latter half of 2021. Adidas also saw its sales plummet on Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba after the company took a stand against the treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. In April, sales dropped 78% compared to the same period in 2020, according to Morningstar Inc.

Adidas' German arch-rival Puma is shifting production away from China as well. The company, which makes more than a quarter of its products in the People's Republic, is keen to diversify its manufacturing base and supply chains, not to mention avoid US tariffs by producing more of its running shoes, sportswear and other products in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam. The brand faced online attacks in March following statements it made about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China, which prompted uncertainty about the company’s future sales in the country. Sales did slow after a strong first quarter, and Puma CEO Bjorn Gulden said: “There is less activity in the Western brand stores [in China] than there would have been if tension wasn’t there”.

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American firm Hasbro moved a significant proportion of its production out of China to factories in Vietnam and India. Amid the ongoing US-China trade war, the world's number one publicly-listed toymaker expected to produce around half of goods destined for the American market in China by the end of 2020, down from just under two-thirds in 2019. Despite lower levels of production in China, importing goods is causing havoc for Hasbro as the company is one of many suffering from the global shipping container shortage that is preventing goods from being transported from China to the US.

Unsurprisingly Kia’s parent company, Hyundai Motor Group, has also taken steps to shift manufacturing away from China. With sales in the country flagging following the 2017 boycott of South Korean businesses, the company closed its Beijing plant in May 2019. The company posted operating losses of 1.152 trillion won ($1bn/£726m) in China for 2020, which was its worst performance since Hyundai Motor Group was first established in the People’s Republic in 2002. While production in China has dropped, the firm is boosting manufacturing of its vehicles in India.

With the US-China trade war showing no sign of abating, Stanley Black & Decker is also on the move. The industrial tools and household hardware maker permanently closed its factory in Shenzhen in November after 25 years of operation. Growing competition and rising labour and land costs were cited as reasons for the closure. Stanley Black & Decker had planned to open its brand new 425,000-square-foot, $90 million (£68.5m) factory in Fort Worth, Texas by the end of 2020, although it was delayed until this year.

As relations between the US and China worsened and the trade conflict intensified, Dell quietly moved production and supply chains away from the People's Republic. In fact, the Nikkei Asian Review reported in 2019 that the Texas-headquartered tech company was planning to shift up to 30% of its notebook production out of China.

That same Nikkei Asian Review report cited anonymous sources stating that Dell competitor HP was also planning to relocate 30% of its notebook production away from China. The reasoning behind both moves was to avoid the punishing US tariffs on tech products produced in the People's Republic for the US market.

Google is more or less blocked in China, but the search engine's parent company Alphabet still produces hardware products in the country, although perhaps not for much longer. As supply chains have become disrupted, the tech behemoth has moved manufacturing of its flagship Pixel smartphone to Vietnam and will reportedly produce various smart home products in Thailand rather than the People's Republic, while production of its Cloud motherboards and Nest products has relocated to Taiwan and Malaysia. Shifting production away from China has been a longer process than hoped though because of outbreaks of COVID-19 in countries such as Vietnam.

Even before COVID-19 disrupted supply chains and the US-China trade war turned even uglier, American action camera company GoPro had relocated much of its US-bound manufacturing away from China to Mexico, a move that was announced back in December 2018.

Though Intel remains confident in the Chinese economy and is strongly committed to operating in the country, the Silicon Valley-based semiconductor chipmaker has followed many US companies by shifting the manufacturing and assembly of some of its wares from the People's Republic to Vietnam. Intel’s former CEO Bob Swan also wrote to then-President-Elect Joe Biden in November, outlining the necessity of a “national manufacturing strategy” to “ensure American companies compete on a level playing field” in response to the likely scenario of China dominating the semiconductor chip production industry in the next decade. The company’s new CEO Pat Gelsinger reinforced this message in March when he announced a $20 billion (£14.4bn) plan to build two new chip manufacturing facilities in Arizona. Intel then announced in September that it would be investing up to $95 billion (£68.2bn) in producing chips in Europe as the company seeks to add production capacity during the global semiconductor shortage.

In 2019, Nintendo moved some production of its Switch console from China to Vietnam but, like Sony, the Japanese video games company said the move has nothing to do with the US-China trade war and was more about diversifying its manufacturing options and avoiding putting all its eggs in one basket.

Companies are not only relocating their manufacturing operations away from China, but many foreign retailers have decided to bow out of the country altogether. They include Gap sub-brand Old Navy, which shuttered all of its 10 stores and concessions in China in March 2020, planning to focus its attention on the North American market instead.

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The New York Times decided to move part of its Hong Kong office to Seoul, South Korea, in response to Beijing's controversial security law which came into effect in June last year. The law curtails freedom of speech in the Special Administrative Region. According to the US news outlet, the law "unsettled news organisations and created uncertainty about [Hong Kong's] prospects as a hub for journalism". 

Taiwan's Quanta Computer is the world's third biggest electronics manufacturing services company and a major supplier of data centre servers to US tech firms such as Google and Facebook. The company opted to pivot production away from China and moved some of its manufacturing from the country to a new $500 million (£383m) plant in the Taiwanese municipality of Taoyuan in 2019.

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