Entering 2026, the globalization process of Chinese enterprises has moved from the "testing the waters" stage to the "deep diving" stage. If going global over the past decade was about selling goods, the current overseas expansion of Chinese enterprises is characterized by the transnational transfer of production capacity, the global layout of R&D centers, and the deep reconstruction of the brand value chain.
Author | Zhang Leci
Editor | Xing Yiran
According to the latest statistical data, China's total Outward Foreign Direct Investment (ODI) reached 174.4 billion USD in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 7.1%. Among this, non-financial ODI was 145.7 billion USD, showing a robust growth momentum. Meanwhile, the non-financial investment of Chinese enterprises in countries along the "Belt and Road" increased by 17.6%, accounting for 27%.
With the acceleration of Chinese enterprises' going global process, a problem has become increasingly prominent: when business expands overseas, how should organization and talent be localized? Going global enterprises find that traditional domestic human resources management models often quickly fail in unfamiliar regulatory frameworks and cultures. Meanwhile, when choosing mature Western SaaS or Employer of Record (EOR) giants, they frequently encounter "acclimatization issues" such as rigid processes, a lack of Chinese language support, and difficulty adapting to China's high-intensity agile management logic.
Against this background, local human resources service providers accompanying Chinese enterprises on their overseas expeditions are ushering in their own explosive growth.
Core Pain Points of Chinese Enterprises Going Global
The first core pain point faced by Chinese enterprises going global lies in the huge difference in management granularity. Represented by cross-border e-commerce, financial technology, and new energy, Chinese enterprises expanding overseas have highly variable organizational structures, complex performance appraisal systems (such as the deep mixing of OKRs and KPIs), and recruitment demands that often show exponential expansion. This ultimate pursuit of "flexibility" and "reaction speed" makes European and American tools appear sluggish when facing Chinese-style agile management.
Secondly, data sovereignty and two-way compliance are another unavoidable red line. With the deep implementation of China's Data Security Law (数据安全法) and Personal Information Protection Law (个人信息保护法), Chinese enterprises overseas must not only comply with strict privacy acts such as the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), but also ensure that core personnel and business data can be safely transmitted back or achieve compliant circulation domestically and internationally.
The cost of violating GDPR is extremely high, with fines reaching up to 20 million EUR or 4% of the enterprise's global annual turnover, making compliance a digital proposition related to the enterprise's survival. Service providers with a Chinese background naturally understand this need for "dual compliance" in their underlying system logic.
Furthermore, the complexity of transnational payroll settlement and foreign exchange channels often becomes a financial nightmare for enterprises going global, such as multi-currency settlement, varying local personal income tax and social security payments, and how to open up channels for domestic funds to legally exit the country. Chinese local service providers have demonstrated empathy and technical adaptability far exceeding those of overseas competitors in the capital chain, financial and tax consulting, and docking with the financial systems of Chinese headquarters.
Moreover, management friction in cross-cultural teams is often severely underestimated. Chinese enterprises going global generally carry a strong "Chinese DNA," accustomed to high-intensity goal orientation and flexible responses. However, in many overseas markets, local employees highly value work boundaries and the spirit of contract. When strong directives are issued from the domestic headquarters, traditional overseas institutions are often only responsible for mechanical contract compliance, powerless to intervene or even mediate such deep-seated management conflicts.
In contrast, local service providers better understand the management demands of Chinese enterprises and can "translate" management goals into institutional language acceptable to local employees within the framework of local labor laws.
Finally, there is the fragmentation of business processes and office habits. Domestic enterprises have long been accustomed to highly integrated digital collaboration, extremely complex approval workflows, flexible attendance, and fine-grained permission control. Moreover, Chinese enterprises going global often adopt a dual-line or even multi-line reporting matrix involving "overseas local managers and domestic headquarters HRBPs."
Faced with this complex architecture, mainstream overseas human resources systems appear somewhat rigid. Meanwhile, Chinese local service providers can not only seamlessly integrate with mainstream domestic office software but also restore complex domestic business approval nodes, allowing the management of overseas teams to truly integrate into the control and management chain of the group headquarters.
The Three Major Strategic Paths of Chinese Human Resources Service Providers Going Global
In order to gain a firm foothold in the complex and volatile global market, Chinese human resources service providers have evolved three complementary business paths.
The first path is Employer of Record (EOR) services and employment platforms, which primarily solve the "0 to 1" compliance implementation issue. In the early stages of going global, many enterprises do not wish to immediately establish cumbersome legal entities in every target country. By building a self-owned or cooperative network around the world, the EOR acts as the legal employer to help enterprises employ staff on their behalf, pay social security, and process payroll. This "asset-light" expansion model, combined with digital platforms, greatly shortens the cycle for enterprises to enter new markets.
The second path is the export of HR SaaS and digital foundations, focusing on solving the "1 to N" organizational control and collaboration. This not only requires the system to support multiple languages, multiple currencies, and multiple time zones, but also requires it to have deep PaaS capabilities, enabling flexible configuration according to the differences in labor laws of various countries. This digital foundation is the core tool for the headquarters to grasp the global distribution of talent assets in real-time, monitor employment costs, and implement unified cultural values.
The third path is the global talent attraction and headhunting network. In the context of globalization, simple "expatriation" can no longer meet the needs of deep business cultivation, and enterprises urgently need "Glocal" composite talents who can communicate between China and foreign countries and possess deep local industry knowledge.
In this regard, Chinese local headhunting agencies are gradually forming a dual-drive model of "Chinese enterprise business translators and localized delivery networks." On the one hand, leading agencies such as Career International (科锐国际) directly acquire mature local consultant teams overseas through capital mergers and acquisitions, opening up the search chain for local mid-to-high-end talents.
On the other hand, platforms such as Liepin (猎聘) rely on their digital accumulation to accelerate the establishment of a mixed talent pool of "Chinese elites and localized backbone" in emerging markets.
Although Chinese-funded service providers currently still face the shortcoming of lacking trust endorsements from local elite circles when competing for top executive talent, in the two core demands of "expatriation of Chinese executives" and "localization of overseas Chinese," they are already able to accurately hit the real business intentions of enterprises going global, providing delivery guarantees far exceeding those of traditional overseas institutions.
China's HR Service Mapping from a Global Perspective
Cross-border Compliance and Payroll: BIPO, PayInOne, and Joyow GEO
In the fields of cross-border compliance and Employer of Record (EOR) services, BIPO (必博) is one of the most representative global service providers. Although founded in Shanghai, it has deep international roots, with one of its current headquarters located in Singapore. BIPO's core competitive advantage lies in its vast "wholly-owned service network". Unlike many platforms that rely on third-party subcontracting, BIPO has established its own legal entities in dozens of countries and regions, ensuring stronger risk control and higher service accuracy. For large Chinese enterprises, especially manufacturing, retail, and tech giants with deep layouts in the Asia-Pacific, BIPO provides comprehensive localized compliance "butler" services. Financial data from 2024–2025 shows steady revenue growth in Singapore and India, highlighting its deep moat in Southeast and South Asian markets.
In contrast, PayInOne represents a new generation of "tech-driven" global employment platforms. Its core entry point is a superior product experience and settlement channels that align with Chinese financial logic. PayInOne addresses the anxieties of Chinese enterprises regarding fund settlement and payment by integrating the entire process—from contracting and onboarding to payroll and tax filing—into a systematic platform. The system supports the payroll cycles customary to Chinese firms and offers professional support entirely in Chinese. Competing against global unicorns like Deel and Remote, PayInOne has rapidly gained the favor of small and medium-sized tech firms due to its deeper understanding of Chinese financial compliance pain points and higher cost-effectiveness.
While BIPO targets large clients and PayInOne focuses on technical experience, Joyow GEO (金柚GEO) represents another explosive path: the natural extension from massive domestic HR outsourcing to a global employment foundation. Relying on its huge domestic service network, Joyow GEO (金柚GEO) has quickly built a digital service network covering over 150 countries and regions.
For medium-sized manufacturing and cross-border e-commerce companies rapidly expanding from China, Joyow GEO's (金柚GEO) greatest appeal lies in its "integrated domestic and overseas" delivery capability.
HR SaaS and Digital Infrastructure: Beisen, Moka, and GaiaWorks
In the wave of HR digital transformation, Beisen (北森), as a leader in Chinese HR SaaS, follows a strategy of "accompanying large clients overseas". Its integrated overseas version focuses on the vertical management needs of multinational headquarters over global branches. For enterprises with tens of thousands of global employees, Beisen balances "Global Control + Local Operation" through its PaaS platform's scalability, ensuring local attendance rules and structures are both site-specific and aggregated to the headquarters' dashboard in real-time. Another key advantage is its deep integration with electronic signature platforms like eSignGlobal. The system automatically routes the signing logic based on the employee's physical location—domestic employees sign via the internal network, while overseas employees are routed to international sites meeting local legal requirements—ensuring every offer and contract is legally valid and automatically archived at headquarters.
Moka demonstrates global capabilities through its high-frequency entry point: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Moka's advantage lies in its deep integration into the global recruitment ecosystem, connecting with platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed while designing strict data flow loops for privacy regulations like the EU's GDPR. Moka's data indicates that through AI-automated screening and smart scheduling, recruitment efficiency can increase by 75%, and candidate screening speeds can improve threefold. For Chinese firms, Moka provides a governance logic compliant with international security standards. In the 2026 ATS Procurement Guide, Moka is listed as a leading global AI-driven recruitment system, and its ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications eliminate data security concerns for expanding firms.
While Beisen and Moka address "white-collar and management" coordination, GaiaWorks (盖雅工场) is the indispensable labor management infrastructure for Chinese manufacturing and retail expansion. In hotspots like Southeast Asia and Latin America, factories and stores face complex scheduling, attendance, and strict local labor laws. With refined attendance algorithms and underlying computing support for multi-country labor laws, GaiaWorks helps major Chinese firms precisely control overseas efficiency and compliance, completing a key piece of the digital puzzle for multinational blue-collar employment.
Global Talent Attraction and Capital Layout: Career International, Liepin, and CGP
Career International (科锐国际) epitomizes the transition of China's HR industry from endogenous growth to capital-driven expansion. Beyond following clients like Huawei and Hikvision (海康威视) abroad, it acquired the mature UK recruitment brand Investigo in 2018, gaining instant access to Western high-end talent markets. By 2025, Career International had over 160 branches in 12 countries. Its 2025 revenue exceeded 14.5 billion CNY, with net profit growing by over 48% year-on-year. Its core value lies in "critical position delivery". In manufacturing bases like Vietnam and Thailand, "Glocal" composite talents—those who speak Chinese and understand Chinese management—are scarce and command salaries 40% higher than average. Career International uses its network to locate these talents, directly aiding the overseas localization of production.
In addition to giants built on M&A, Liepin (猎聘) represents the "asymmetric competition" of digital platforms. Liepin has heavily invested in overseas business, using big data and AI matching to build a vast database of "overseas Chinese and international students". This provides a cost-effective channel for firms in early expansion stages to quickly build localized teams that understand Chinese business logic.
In the pure high-end headhunting track, CGP Group, founded in China, is another significant force. As one of Asia's largest comprehensive HR service institutions, CGP has direct branches in Singapore, the US, Japan, and the Middle East. Utilizing "East-meets-West" executive consultant teams, they specifically target highly localized executive positions for top Chinese firms, filling the trust vacuum in elite overseas circles where Chinese firms were previously "unintroduced".
The New Normal in Overseas Talent Markets and Chinese Enterprises' Responses
In the "deep-sea" stage of going global, talent is not merely a resource but an extremely complex asset. EqualOcean's research indicates profound shifts in the global workplace ecosystem, particularly in Asia.
For instance, Vietnam's labor market is transitioning from "scale expansion" to "efficiency optimization." In 2025, while the average salary adjustment reached a historical low, compensation for high-end technical talent and mid-to-senior managers remained resilient. Demand has exploded specifically in the new energy vehicle, semiconductor, and lithium battery industries for professionals capable of bridging Chinese and foreign cultures.
In India, the surge of Global Capability Centers (GCCs) has intensified the war for talent. Reports from 2025 show that the average salary increase for Indian GCCs held at approximately 9.9%, with 71% of organizations offering Long-Term Incentives (LTIs), such as Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). This implies that in markets like India, Chinese enterprises are competing not only with local firms but also with top-tier global capital.
Facing this "high-premium, high-competition" environment, Chinese HR service providers help enterprises avoid blind spending by offering real-time global salary insights and benefit design recommendations. They assist in retaining key talent through more personalized benefits and clearer career progression paths.
For example, in northern Vietnamese industrial zones where Chinese firms are concentrated, job seekers with Chinese language proficiency generally earn monthly salaries 10% to 40% higher than those in similar positions. Even entry-level translation assistants can earn between 12 million and 18 million VND (approximately 3,150 to 4,730 CNY), whereas standard administrative roles earn only 8 million to 12 million VND (approximately 2,100 to 3,150 CNY). Such data insights are critical for Chinese enterprises to develop precise labor budgets.
Future Outlook: From "Following Overseas" to "Collaborative Governance Overseas"
The collective leap of Chinese HR service providers heralds the arrival of a new era. In the past, China was a recipient of rules, primarily learning Western management modules. Today, however, Chinese service providers are exporting management wisdom embedded with "Chinese genes," built upon the global practices of Chinese enterprises.
From 2025 onwards, the core driving force of HR technology will shift toward AI agents and employee experience. Future HR systems will no longer be mere tools for time-tracking or payroll calculation; instead, they will evolve into AI assistants capable of proactively monitoring organizational risks, intelligently matching talent, and even conducting preliminary compliance audits on behalf of the company.
For expanding enterprises, this means that once-massive overseas HR departments can be streamlined into a combination of "super administrators and AI agents," utilizing automation tools to offset the pressure of rising global labor costs.
The ultimate vision for Chinese service providers should not be limited to serving "Chinese-funded enterprises" alone. With the establishment of direct entities and the internationalization of technical architectures, players like BIPO, Career International (科锐国际), and PayInOne are highly likely to participate directly in global competition for existing market shares, serving local corporate clients in India, Southeast Asia, and even Europe and the United States.
Conclusion: Calming the Waves in the Great Age of Navigation
The globalization of Chinese enterprises is a protracted war. In this battle, the strength of organizational power directly determines whether a company is merely a "transient traveler" fighting on foreign turf or a true "local brand" rooted in the community. In this process, the role of local Chinese HR service providers is shifting from "supporting characters" to "protagonists."
They not only help Chinese enterprises bypass compliance traps and solve payroll challenges but, more importantly, they use digital means to successfully achieve a "lossless migration" of the aggressive, agile, and results-oriented management soul characteristic of Chinese firms into foreign lands.
Those HR vendors who can profoundly understand the growth logic of Chinese enterprises while internalizing global legal and compliance standards into their product features will undoubtedly become the most solid organizational foundation in this Great Age of Navigation.
For Chinese enterprises currently or planning to go global, choosing a human resources partner who understands both Chinese culture and global rules will be the investment with the greatest leverage in their globalization strategy.