As the US-China trade war and dispute over Taiwan 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 erosion of Hong Kong's autonomy – many globally-renowned companies are deserting China.

In fact, research firm Gartner revealed that a third of supply chain leaders had plans to move at least some of their manufacturing out of China before next year. 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. 

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, and Apple has just begun producing its new iPhone 14 at a new production line in the city of Chennai. According to the Guardian, it's the first time the company has produced an iPhone model outside of China in the same year as its release. Meanwhile, other contract manufacturers are setting up in Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, where Apple is reportedly planning to outsource 30% of its AirPods production. 

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 in 2020, 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 in November 2020.

Instead, Samsung will reportedly focus on chip manufacturing within the US. According to Kim Young-woo at SK Securities, the company has "been rethinking their strategies because of the US-China technology war, and they are now tilting further towards the US because of geopolitical risks.” The decision is likely to have been motivated by the recent US CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law on 9 August this year, which grants billions of dollars to chip manufacturers in the US on the condition they don't expand chip operations in China for the next 10 years. 

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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. 

Unlike its arch-rival Adidas, which has halved its Chinese manufacturing since 2010 but now says it expects to grow in China this year, Puma is still feeling the effects of a Chinese consumer boycott, sparked by statements it made about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in March last year. Sales slowed 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”. According to Reuters, Gulden was pessimistic that sales would improve this year.

The company, which used to make 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. It's now producing more of its running shoes, sportswear, and other products in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. 

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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. 

Joining other South Korean companies such as Samsung and LG that are turning their backs on China, automaker Kia Motors shut one of its key plants in the country in 2019. The Seoul-based company has put the closure down to slumping sales in the People's Republic as a result of a boycott in 2017 of South Korean companies, which was precipitated by the South Korean military's deployment of a US-made missile defence system. As of last year, China accounted for just 5.6% of Kia vehicle sales, compared to 16.8% in Europe, 19.2% in Korea, and 21.2% in 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 2021.

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. Last year it was also reported that HP has sold its Chinese laser printer production to Taiwanese company Foxconn. 

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, but some of Google's latest Pixel phones are now being made in the country, according to sources quoted in the New York Times this September. 

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 2020, 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 CEO Pat Gelsinger reinforced this message in March last year when he announced a $20 billion (£14.4bn) plan to build two new chip manufacturing facilities in Arizona. Intel then announced last 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. Like Sony, however, 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 2020. 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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