Linglong Tyre Overseas Expansion Insights: The Next Stop Is Not Capacity Export, But Ecosystem Export

On August 8, the 20th China Brand Festival opened in Beijing. China Tire Business Network (Tirechina.net) learned that Linglong Tyre President Zhou Lingkun was invited to attend the opening ceremony's summit dialogue, engaging in exchanges around the theme "Ecosystem Going Global: From Going It Alone to 'Wild Goose Formation' Win-Win".

As the global industrial chain undergoes deep restructuring, the globalization of Chinese enterprises is stepping into a new phase — no longer a simple output of products, but a systemic evolution involving technology, standards, brands, and ecosystems. As a pioneer in the industry for going global earliest, Linglong's nearly 20-year globalization journey is a vivid footnote to this process.

From Pioneering to Ecosystem Elevation

Looking back at Linglong Tyre's path to going global, President Zhou Lingkun summarized it into four stages on site.

The first stage is pioneering. Since 2009, Linglong has ranked first in exports among Chinese domestic tire enterprises for 13 consecutive years, but at that time it was "one person carrying samples running all over the world", channels, standards, and brands were controlled by others. The second stage is building factories across the ocean. The Thailand factory started production in 2014, making Linglong one of the earliest Chinese tire enterprises to build factories overseas; In September 2024, the Serbia factory officially went into mass production, praised by President Vucic as "Serbia's largest greenfield investment project", Linglong moved from "selling products" to "building capacity".

The third stage is system supremacy. Establishing R&D centers in "three countries, eight locations", defining its own technology and product standards. The fourth stage is ecosystem elevation — rooting and integrating into every overseas market, with ESG as the core, moving from capability output to system output.

"After going through the four stages, our deepest realization is — going it alone allows survival, but to win, one must rely on the ecosystem." Zhou Lingkun said. Only with ecosystems coordinating operations can one go further and fight steadier.

Linglong Tyre's "Wild Goose Formation" Combination

When the host asked whom Linglong most hoped to come along and "fly high", President Zhou Lingkun expressed that it was not pointing to a specific enterprise, but a complete ecosystem combination.

In his view, ecosystem going global is not one enterprise going it alone, but different roles playing their respective parts and progressing together. The OEM is the "Leading Goose", Linglong participates deeply with the OEM, joint research and development, where the OEM opens up, Linglong follows where, and supports where; Professional service providers are the "Supporting Geese", financial, legal, compliance, logistics and other soft infrastructure, cannot be completed by Linglong alone, needs professional partners to support together; Industry associations, think tanks, and testing institutions are the "Escort Geese", for Chinese standards to have equal global discourse power, the whole ecosystem needs joint efforts.

Take Off Together to Fly Further

At the meeting, Linglong was awarded the China Brand Top 500 Value Certificate

Industry Comment

The "Wild Goose Formation" ecosystem going global proposed by Linglong Tyre not only summarizes an enterprise's development experience, but also reflects the collective shift in the globalization process of China's tire industry.

For the past few decades, China's tire industry completed preliminary penetration of the global market based on manufacturing cost advantages, export scale has long led globally, but has always faced industry-common difficulties such as frequent trade barriers, low brand premium, and insufficient overseas localization operation capabilities. The globalization of most small and medium tire enterprises still remains at the product trade level, the model of going it alone is both difficult to cope with complex overseas policies, compliance and supply chain risks, and also difficult to support brands breaking through to high-end markets.

With leading enterprises completing overseas capacity landing and building global R&D networks, the globalization of Chinese tires has entered the deep water area. "China brand going global is not about comparing who flies faster, but who flies further, flies steadier, flies as a team." Zhou Lingkun stated in the dialogue, there are no supporting roles in the wild goose formation, every participant has their own value, moving forward towards a common goal simultaneously.

From product output to capacity layout, then to technology standards and ecosystem system output, the globalization of Chinese tire brands is experiencing a key leap from quantity to quality. When the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain form a combined force, and go global collaboratively with a "Wild Goose Formation" posture, the Chinese tire industry can truly establish long-term competitiveness in the global market, achieve brand upgrade from "going out" to "going up", and win more recognition and respect on the global stage.