Greater China's mid-market: the quiet expansion
The companies we finance onshore are not the ones in the headlines. They are manufacturers and software firms growing at fifteen per cent with paid-up order books.
Lena Zhao
Head of Greater China
Regional in brief
Part of our Regional series, this 7 min note is written by Lena Zhao, Head of Greater China, and sets out what the desk is seeing, followed by the three points we would watch before signing.
- Series
- Regional
- Published
- 19 March 2026
- Author
- Lena Zhao · Head of Greater China
- Reading time
- 7 min
Away from the consumer internet, a different cohort of Chinese companies has been compounding quietly. Industrial automation suppliers, specialty logistics operators, enterprise software vendors selling to manufacturers. Growth rates are unremarkable by 2020 standards and unusually durable by any standard.
What these companies need is not equity at a venture price. It is working capital with a fixed cost, in renminbi, with a tenor that matches their order book. That is a lending problem, and it is best underwritten by people who can visit the plant.
Currency is the structural complication. An onshore borrower with dollar-denominated customers and renminbi costs needs the exposure hedged at the facility level, not at the group level after the fact. We structure it at close and report the hedge alongside the covenant pack.
The opportunity is real but narrow. It rewards lenders with an onshore presence and a credit process that can read a factory's order book, and it punishes those underwriting from a spreadsheet three time zones away.