Chinese tech giants are vying for the "second half of the internet" in Brazil.
Text by Li Dan
Edited by Lu Zhen
Latin America is one of the continents farthest from China. Starting from Beijing, it takes more than 20 hours of flight and a journey of 16,000 kilometers to reach Brazil. However, neither the geographical distance nor the cultural unfamiliarity has deterred Chinese enterprises from their determination to explore business opportunities. Brazil is becoming an important stop on the globalization journey of more and more Chinese enterprises.
Not long ago, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited China and attended the China-Brazil Business Seminar. On May 12, Meituan announced that it would introduce its food delivery service Keeta to Brazil in the next few months and planned to invest $1 billion in Brazil over the next five years to support the development of this project. Didi got ahead of Meituan. On April 5, Didi announced the restart of its food delivery business in Brazil under the brand "99 Food", coordinating with diversified local services such as transportation and payment in Brazil.
Meanwhile, Mixue Bingcheng announced that it would open its first store in Brazil this year and start the construction of a supply chain factory in the country. It plans to invest in purchasing agricultural products such as coffee beans in Brazil with a total value of no less than 4 billion yuan in the next 3 - 5 years. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also met with relevant officials from GAC Group, and GAC Group clearly stated its plan for local production in Brazil. The Brazilian president also met with Wei Jianjun, the chairman of Great Wall Motors, and Wei Jianjun invited Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to attend the opening ceremony of Great Wall Motors' factory in Brazil.
Behind this series of intensive and large-scale investments and collaborations, there is a question that spans the Pacific Ocean: Why Brazil?
Swimming into the Last Blue Ocean
When it comes to Brazil, most Chinese people may think of football, samba, and carnivals. Now, besides these cultural symbols, there might be an additional business imprint: After Southeast Asia and Europe and the United States, Latin America is regarded as "the last blue ocean" by many Chinese enterprises, and Brazil is the outpost for going global in Latin America.
Latin America is a region composed of more than thirty countries, and its complexity is no less than that of any other region in the world. Many Chinese enterprises going global choose a country with a relatively high level of development and more attention in the region, accumulate experience and knowledge first, and then expand their reach to other neighboring countries. An obvious trend is to first establish a foothold in Brazil and then radiate to the rest of Latin America.
The first stop for Chinese enterprises in Latin America is either Mexico or Brazil. After establishing a presence in one country, they quickly enter the other. Huawei, Shopee, and Didi went to Brazil first, while J&T Express, SHEIN, and Temu went to Mexico first. Compared with Mexico, the Brazilian market is larger, users' digital habits are more mature, and the competitive landscape is not as highly dominated by US-funded platforms as in Mexico.
"Large market, good foundation, and less competition" can summarize the situation in Brazil. Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America and also the most populous country in the region, with a population of 210 million. In 2024, its per capita GDP was about $11,178, belonging to the upper-middle-income level, which is not much different from that of China.
The market potential lies in the strong consumption willingness of the people. Brazilians have a "hedonistic" spirit in their bones. The per capita consumption expenditure of residents is about $6,800, significantly higher than that in China. Although the consumption willingness is strong, it is also a country with a large gap between the rich and the poor. Except for a very small number of wealthy people accounting for 1% of the population, most Brazilians, especially the middle class, need products and services with higher "cost - performance". For Chinese enterprises known for "good quality and low price", this demand is like a tailor - made opportunity.
However, Brazil is not an uncharted territory. Many pioneers have already come here.
As early as 1999, Huawei opened its first overseas representative office in Latin America in Brazil. However, since Brazil had long only purchased products from European manufacturers and knew nothing about Huawei, it was very resistant. It was not until 2004 that Huawei cooperated with CTBC in Brazil to build a new - generation mobile communication network, which was Huawei's first contract in Latin America. The communication network built by Huawei accelerated the popularization of the Internet and opened the era of mobile Internet here.
Then came a group of Chinese automobile enterprises. The earliest pioneers were Chery and Jianghuai. They started selling cars in Brazil in 2009 and successively announced investment in building factories. Then came Lifan and Great Wall. In 2014, BYD launched electric buses in Brazil and began to layout the new - energy vehicle market in the country. At that time, there was a saying that "one out of every ten cars running on the streets of Brazil is a Chinese car".
● A container ship is approaching the port of Santos in Brazil. Image source: Visual China
In Latin America, Brazil leads in Internet penetration. According to the report "Digital 2025: Brazil" released by DataReportal, as of early 2025, the total number of Internet users in Brazil was about 183 million, accounting for about 86.2% of the country's total population. According to Statista data, about 99.1% of Brazilian respondents owned smartphones in 2024. This means that almost every Internet user accesses the Internet via smartphones.
Just like in China, the full - scale popularization of the Internet in Brazil is inseparable from the development of the smartphone market. Since 2015, Huawei has started local production and sales of smartphones in Latin America. Consumer electronics brands represented by Xiaomi, Transsion, and Honor have also targeted this huge market. In 2015, Xiaomi tried to enter the Brazilian market, but at that time, Latin American consumers had no knowledge of Xiaomi. Coupled with the economic downturn in Brazil and high import taxes, Xiaomi announced its withdrawal one year later. It was not until 2019 that Xiaomi, which had gained some international popularity, decided to return to Brazil and opened its first physical store in São Paulo.
Nowadays, Latin America is one of the few markets still experiencing high - speed growth while the global smartphone shipments are declining. Based in Brazil, smartphone manufacturers can more easily sell their products to other Latin American countries.
Brazil is also known as "the country most in love with mobile phones". Brazilian users spend an average of 5 hours and 12 minutes on their smartphones every day, ranking third in the world. In contrast, the figure in China is only 3 hours and 32 minutes.
These data together depict a picture of Brazil as the largest Internet market in Latin America.
On the basis of the popularization of mobile phones and the Internet, mobile game manufacturers entering Latin America almost always choose Brazil as their first stop. Chinese game giants Tencent, NetEase, and Mihoyo have already made layouts in Latin America. In 2022, Tencent announced the opening of an office in Brazil and the establishment of a local operation team. The two major short - video platforms, ByteDance's TikTok and Kuaishou's Kwai, respectively set up offices in São Paulo in 2018 and 2019.
After the pandemic, there has been a profound transformation worldwide in socializing, entertainment, and consumption from offline to online. Chinese Internet giants are paying more and more attention to this emerging market in Brazil. In 2021, Kwai became the official sponsor of the Brazilian national football team and obtained the exclusive production right of short - video content during the World Cup. TikTok cooperated with Brazil's Globo TV and mainstream record companies. Both platforms spent money to attract new users and established a foothold through a series of local promotion strategies.
As the largest e - commerce market in Latin America, Brazil also presents business opportunities to Chinese merchants. From 2020 to 2022, Brazil's e - commerce sales increased from about 126 billion reais to 169.6 billion reais. Multiple e - commerce platforms such as AliExpress, SHEIN, Shopee, and Temu have successively entered Brazil, staging an "e - commerce war".
This also exposes the complex side of this fertile land.
Hidden Reefs in the Channel: Taxation, Payment, and Logistics
Any fertile land full of opportunities hides unique risks, and any channel leading to the blue ocean is fraught with hidden reefs and rough waves.
AliExpress launched its Portuguese and Spanish versions in 2014 to facilitate Latin American consumers; SHEIN started to layout in Brazil in 2019, and Shopee entered Brazil the same year; in 2023, TikTok announced the opening of e - commerce in 12 countries, with Spain and Brazil as the preferred destinations; in 2024, Temu officially landed in Brazil, and soon after, Kwai launched its e - commerce platform Kwai Shop in Brazil.
Brazil is a country in constant upheaval, and the historical balance rarely favors the Brazilians. The deep - seated pain left by the colonial history makes Brazil vigilant against "outsiders". The first thing these companies face when coming to Brazil is the complex and changeable tax system and trade protectionist policies.
Brazil is known as the "country of ten thousand taxes". Its tax system is complex, multi - level, and has a high tax burden. Brazil is a federal country, and its 26 states have different tax systems. Each state and city has different tax policies for different products and industries. Taxes are levied on goods in the circulation and sales processes across regions, involving a total of sixty or seventy types of taxes. In addition to import taxes, other miscellaneous fees such as union fees, handling fees, management commissions, import permit fees, port surcharges, and merchant ship renewal fees may also be charged depending on the specific customs clearance situation.
According to the research of the Brazilian Institute of Tax Planning (IBPT), the cost paid by enterprises for tax compliance accounts for more than 1% of their turnover. High compliance and operating costs are the first hurdle for multinational enterprises wanting to invest in Brazil.
The recent cancellation of the T86 tax - free policy for small parcels in the United States, which "hit" the cross - border e - commerce industry hard, also happened in Brazil. In 2023, the Brazilian government carried out a tax reform, imposing a 17% standard turnover tax (ICMS) on small cross - border parcels worth less than $50, and a 60% customs duty and a 17% standard turnover tax on those worth $50 or more. One year later, when Temu officially entered Brazil, Brazil raised taxes again - imposing a 20% import duty on cross - border parcels worth less than $50, which took effect on August 1, 2024.
The Brazilian business community once jointly reported to the government several e - commerce platforms including Shopee, SHEIN, and AliExpress, accusing them of "unfair competition", which affected the legitimate operations of local e - commerce platforms.
● During the promotion season in São Paulo, Brazil, local logistics center workers work overtime all night. Image source: Visual China
In the past, these Chinese - backed e - commerce platforms were good at marketing. Taking SHEIN as an example, in the first two years after entering Brazil, it followed a route of "emphasizing marketing and neglecting assets". However, the special situation of difficult customs clearance, difficult logistics, and high tariffs in Brazil, combined with the tax reform on cross - border small parcels, has made these platforms heavily invest in localization.
In December 2021, Xu Yangtian, the founder of SHEIN, visited Brazil in person to investigate the Brazilian clothing supply chain, met and communicated with local top clothing suppliers, and evaluated the feasibility of producing clothing products in Brazil. In March 2024, Felipe Festerle, the head of SHEIN Brazil, said that SHEIN already had 15,000 sellers and 300 factories in Brazil, and locally produced products accounted for 55% of all products sold by SHEIN in Brazil.
In April 2022, Felipe Piringer, the marketing and strategy director of Shopee in Brazil, said that Shopee had covered 2 million local sellers in Brazil, 87% of its sales came from local products, and only 13% came from cross - border products.
The next hurdle for e - commerce and consumer enterprises to cross is the almost non - existent infrastructure. In the early days, as the two pillars of e - commerce supporting infrastructure, logistics and payment in the Latin American market were very backward.
In terms of payment, Brazilians prefer to use cash to pay bills and shop. Many Brazilians do not have bank accounts and cannot use electronic payment, so they can only rely on cash for transactions.
It was not until October 2020 that the Central Bank of Brazil launched the instant payment system PIX. As of August 2023, in a survey of the frequency of use of payment methods by local consumers in Brazil, 70% of Brazilian users had chosen to pay with PIX, only 1 percentage point less than the proportion of cash users, becoming the second - most popular local payment method in Brazil.
In terms of logistics, it takes at least 34 hours and two transfers to airlift goods from Shenzhen to Brazil. If shipped by sea, the delivery time usually takes 15 to 40 days. In recent years, some sellers have reported that the frequency of customs inspections has been increasing, the difficulty of customs clearance has suddenly escalated, and the delivery time has been lengthened due to the customs clearance process.
What is even more complicated is the last - mile delivery. Brazil has a large land area and diverse terrains, including rainforests, deserts, and plateaus. The logistics and economic conditions vary from region to region, with both wealthy areas and slums. In the Amazon rainforest area, only the Brazilian postal service has the ability to deliver goods. More than ten million people in Brazil live in slums, and each slum has its own operating rules different from the outside world. How to safely deliver goods is also a problem.
● The Moinho slum in the center of São Paulo, Brazil. Image source: Visual China
Four logistics companies with Chinese genes have broken the monopoly of the Brazilian postal service: J&T Express, Anjun Logistics, iMile, and Cainiao.
After launching in Brazil, Temu adopted a full -托管 model and can provide free standard delivery services for all orders. Brazilian buyers don't need to pay extra shipping fees, thanks to its long - time partner J&T Express. In May 2022, J&T Express officially launched its service in Brazil. It is reported that J&T Express sent an 80 - person team to São Paulo nearly a year before the launch. When setting off, the goal was to become the number one in the Brazilian market within three years. However, after exploring the whole of Brazil, they found a huge gap between the reality and the previous research report and lowered the goal to becoming the number one among private express delivery companies.
Anjun Logistics entered the Brazilian market in 2019 by cooperating with the local Latin American payment platform ebanx, and its cooperation with SHEIN also started in 2019. Before SHEIN's local company was registered, Anjun acquired two companies in Brazil and obtained the cross - border customs clearance qualification for procurement. At that time, Anjun got the cheapest Brazilian postal account on the market and built a China - Brazil cross - border dedicated line system from scratch.
iMile originated from the Middle East market and started operations in Brazil in 2022. Also in 2022, Cainiao made public its three - year plan for the Brazilian market, planning to deploy nine distribution centers and jointly put 1,000 groups of smart express cabinets in ten key cities with the Brazilian postal service.
To some extent, Chinese enterprises' going global to Brazil is a pioneering history from scratch. Huawei and smartphone manufacturers laid the foundation, and e - commerce and logistics platforms paved the way. Only then can entertainment and consumer enterprises sell their products to thousands of households.
The Ambitions of New Players and the Inescapable Local Giants
After infrastructure and manufacturing went global, the new goal of Chinese Internet enterprises in Brazil is to make their ecosystems go global.
A good example is Didi.
In early 2017, Didi invested about $100 million to take a stake in the local Brazilian taxi company 99Taxi. Initially, its equity stake was about 30%, and Didi had one seat among the five board members. At that time, Uber held 98% of the market share in Brazil, and 99Taxi had less than 1%, yet it was already the second - largest in the market. In 2018, Didi acquired 99Taxi for about $1 billion. This acquisition not only provided Didi with an existing user base and driver network but also allowed it to use 99Taxi's local recognition and legal status, trading money for time and avoiding starting from scratch.
The problem to be solved at this time was payment. Didi first tried to cooperate with OXXO, the largest convenience store chain in Mexico, in another Latin American country, Mexico. Relying on OXXO's 18,000 stores in the Mexican market, passengers could top up their Didi balances with cash to achieve online payment. In 2020, Didi launched the digital wallet services DiDi Pay and 99 Pay in Mexico and Brazil, supporting multiple payment methods including cash, installment payment, and the Brazilian instant payment system PIX. In addition to payment, these services also provide functions such as money transfer, mobile phone recharge, and even Bitcoin trading.
In addition to online taxi - hailing (99 POP) and online payment (99 Pay), the 99 App also provides other lifestyle services such as motorcycle taxi - hailing (99 Moto), package delivery (99 Entrega), and food delivery (99 Food), which can be compared to Meituan in China and Grab in Southeast Asia. In 2020, Didi once held a 50% market share in the Brazilian transportation market.
Didi's ambition is to achieve a closed - loop of "transportation + payment + food delivery" and gain an advantage in the "second half of the Internet" in Brazil, a country with huge consumption potential, especially in the large - scale local lifestyle sector, ahead of other domestic Internet giants.
● Food delivery riders are busy at work in São Paulo, Brazil. Image source: Visual China
Brazil has the largest food delivery market in Latin America. According to data from Euromonitor International, the food delivery market in Latin America has nearly quadrupled in the past five years, making it the second - fastest - growing region in the world. Meituan's choice of Brazil as the next stop for Keeta's global expansion also illustrates this point.
However, the food delivery business was almost Didi's biggest setback in Latin America.
In Mexico, DiDi Food surpassed the original market leader Uber Eats through a series of ecological integrations and became the market leader. But in Brazil, the local platform iFood holds more than 80% of the market share, and its market position is unshakable. Even Uber Eats announced the suspension of its services in the Brazilian market in 2022 because it couldn't compete with iFood.
iFood's strategy is to burn money on subsidies and sign exclusive agreements. Carlos Moyses, the former CEO of iFood, once said in a media interview that iFood wanted users to order takeout from Monday to Sunday at different times of the day, so it used subsidies to cultivate users' habits.
iFood was founded in 2011. A few years later, when competitors such as Didi and Uber emerged in the market, iFood, feeling a sense of crisis, required restaurants to sign exclusive agreements with the platform, and it was difficult for merchants not to compromise with the largest platform.
In 2020, Rappi filed an antitrust lawsuit against iFood, and Uber Eats and 99 Food also participated in the lawsuit. In 2023, an agreement was finally reached, prohibiting iFood from signing exclusive clauses with chain restaurants with more than 30 stores. By then, 99 Food had already left the Brazilian market regretfully.
More than a month ago, Didi restarted its food delivery business in Brazil. According to media reports, Didi allows merchants to access food delivery, distribution, and financial services simultaneously, weakening the "choose - one - of - two" constraint. Currently, it has reached cooperation intentions with more than 30,000 merchants.
99Food and Keeta, which will enter Brazil in the next few months, indicate that the food delivery market in Brazil will witness a more intense war.
In the e - commerce field, there are also local giants in Brazil. Mercado Livre firmly holds the first position in market share. From 2023 to 2024, Mercado Livre contributed 51.7% of the new GMV in the Brazilian e - commerce market. Amazon and Shopee rank second and third.
This is a company founded in Argentina. It is the first Latin American technology company listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange and one of the companies with the highest market value in Latin America. It has deep roots in Latin America and a very high brand recognition. It is not easy for Chinese cross - border platforms to snatch market share from this giant.
Mixue Bingcheng's plan to open its first store in Brazil this year is also the first step for Chinese tea - drink brands to go global in Brazil.
Like China, Brazil has a long - standing tea - drinking culture, but Brazilians drink mate tea. The relatively large local tea - drink chain brand in Brazil is called Rei do Mate, which means "King of Mate Tea" in Portuguese. Rei do Mate has 80 stores across 17 states in Brazil, selling more than 100 kinds of mate tea, as well as coffee and snacks. Chinese fresh milk tea is still very unfamiliar to Brazilians, and lemonade is a bit more acceptable. However, for Mixue Bingcheng to make Brazilians forget the "King of Mate Tea" and fall in love with the "Snow King", it still faces many challenges such as localization and building a supply chain.
In the words of Eduardo Galeano, Latin America is "an open vein", bleeding minerals and wealth for centuries to nourish distant empires. Today, Latin America is an emerging market full of uncertainties, more alluring but also more dangerous. The physical distance of 16,000 kilometers may be the easiest thing for ambitious Chinese enterprises to overcome.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Jingxiang Studio", author: Jingxiang Author.
