기업의 77%가 중국 시장에서 벗어나 다각화하고 있다. 이러한 변화는 실제로 효과를 보고 있는 것일까?
A growing pile of survey data says the same thing from different angles: sourcing outside China is no longer a contingency plan, it is the plan. One widely cited 2025 retail supply chain survey found that 77% of supply chain leaders had already shifted sourcing away from China toward tariff-neutral countries, while 87% were building up buffer inventory to hedge against further volatility. At the same time, DP World’s 2026 Global Trade Observatory found that 58% of Chinese supply chain executives themselves are increasing the number of suppliers they work with, and over a third are actively pursuing near-shoring and friend-shoring strategies. In other words, diversification is happening on both sides of the trade lane at once.
For freight forwarders, factory owners, and cross-border e-commerce sellers, the headline number is easy to repeat but hard to act on. Diversifying away from a single country of origin sounds simple in a boardroom slide, but it touches sourcing contracts, customs classifications, quality control systems, and — most directly — the entire logistics chain that gets a product from a factory floor to a customer’s door. This article looks past the 77% headline and asks the harder question: is the shift actually working, and what does “working” even mean for a business moving freight today?
The 77% Number: What the Data Actually Shows
The 77% figure gets repeated so often that it has started to sound like a settled fact, but it is worth unpacking where it comes from and what it covers. It is drawn from a survey of retail supply chain leaders conducted in late 2025, and it measures companies that have already shifted at least part of their sourcing toward countries considered tariff-neutral relative to the United States. It does not mean 77% of companies have left China entirely, and it does not mean their China volumes have dropped to zero.
A separate and equally telling data point comes from the American Chamber of Commerce in China, whose annual survey found that around 30% of member companies either considered or actively began relocating some production out of China in 2024, a record high that surpassed the previous peak of 24% set in 2022. Executives interviewed for that survey pointed to both tariff pressure and the lingering memory of pandemic-era shutdowns as the two biggest triggers behind the decision.
Put these numbers side by side and a clearer picture forms. Diversification is broad — a large majority of companies are doing something to reduce single-country exposure — but it is shallow for most of them. Full-scale relocation remains the exception rather than the rule, and even companies that are actively diversifying tend to keep a meaningful share of production in China while building a second or third sourcing base elsewhere.
| 데이터 포인트 | 그림 | 출처 |
| Supply chain leaders who have shifted sourcing away from China | 77% | Retail supply chain survey, late 2025 |
| Leaders increasing buffer inventory as a hedge | 87% | Same survey |
| Chinese executives planning to diversify their own supplier base in 2026 | 58% | DP World Global Trade Observatory 2026 |
| Chinese executives planning near-shoring strategies | 38% | DP World Global Trade Observatory 2026 |
| US companies in China that considered or began relocating production in 2024 | 30% (record high) | AmCham China annual survey |
Where Is the Sourcing Actually Going?
Diversification is not a single migration toward one alternative country; it is a fragmentation of sourcing across several regions, each chosen for a different reason. Vietnam continues to absorb labor-intensive manufacturing, particularly textiles, footwear, and electronics assembly, and posted export growth of roughly 21% year-on-year in the first half of 2026 alone. Mexico has become the default answer for companies serving the US market that want speed rather than the lowest unit cost, with foreign direct investment into Mexican manufacturing hitting record levels and road freight from northern Mexico reaching US distribution centers in as little as four to eight days. India is positioning itself as the scale alternative, with electronics and pharmaceutical exports climbing as government incentive schemes pull in new factory investment.
None of these alternatives replicate what China offers on its own. China’s component ecosystem, tooling capability, and sheer manufacturing density remain difficult to match, which is why so many companies describe their strategy as “China plus one” rather than “China minus China.” The table below summarizes how the leading alternatives typically compare for companies weighing a diversification move.
| 요인 | China | Vietnam | Mexico | India |
| 가장 적합한 | 복잡한 대량 생산 | Textiles, footwear, electronics assembly | US-focused, speed-sensitive goods | Large-scale, labor-intensive production |
| Typical transit to US | 18–30 days by ocean | 20–30 days by ocean | 4–8 days by road | 25–35 days by ocean |
| Tariff exposure (US) | High on many categories | Lower, but rising scrutiny | Largely duty-free under USMCA | 보통 |
| Supplier ecosystem depth | 매우 깊은 | Growing, still developing | Strong in automotive, FMCG | Expanding, uneven infrastructure |
A forwarder’s freight desk sees this fragmentation before the finance team does. A client that once shipped a single consolidated container from Shenzhen now might be coordinating an LCL shipment from Ho Chi Minh City, a full container from Yantian, and a cross-border truck run out of Monterrey, all landing at the same fulfillment center within the same week. That is a very different operational puzzle than a single-origin supply chain, and it is exactly the kind of puzzle that a logistics partner needs to be built to solve.
Is the Shift Actually Working? Three Honest Answers
Whether diversification is “working” depends entirely on what a company was trying to achieve when it started the process, so it helps to separate the goal into three distinct questions rather than treating it as one.
On tariff exposure, the shift is largely doing what it was designed to do. Companies that have moved a meaningful share of production to Vietnam, Mexico, or India are seeing lower landed costs on the goods coming from those countries, and several report that the savings have offset a good part of the tariff burden still sitting on their remaining China-origin volume. This is the clearest, most measurable win, and it is the one executives point to most often when asked whether diversification has been worth the disruption.
On cost and speed to market, the results are far more mixed. Setting up a second manufacturing base rarely reduces total landed cost in the first year or two — new supplier relationships come with higher defect rates, smaller order minimums, and less mature logistics infrastructure around the factories themselves. Mexico’s road freight advantage into the US is real, but it applies mainly to companies selling into North America; a brand focused on the EU or Southeast Asia gets far less benefit from a Mexican production base and may find its transit times to those markets actually get worse.
On resilience, which is arguably the real reason most companies started this process in the first place, the early evidence is encouraging but incomplete. Spreading sourcing across two or three countries clearly reduces the risk of a single-point failure, whether that failure is a tariff change, a regional lockdown, or a port congestion event. But resilience only pays off during the next disruption, and most companies have not yet been tested by one severe enough to prove whether their new, more fragmented network actually holds up under stress.
There is also a quieter finding buried in the DP World data that is easy to miss: Chinese exporters themselves are not retreating from diversification, they are leading it, opening new trade corridors into ASEAN markets, the Middle East, and Africa even as they diversify their own supplier base at 집. That suggests the “shift away from China” story that dominates Western headlines is really one half of a larger, two-directional rebalancing of global trade.
The Part Nobody Puts in the Boardroom Slide: Logistics Complexity
Every diversification case study talks about tariff savings and supplier risk. Almost none of them talk about what happens to the logistics function once sourcing splits across three or four countries. That gap matters, because for a mid-sized brand or an e-commerce seller, the operational cost of complexity can quietly erase a good part of the tariff savings that justified the move in the first place.
A single-origin supply chain out of China allows a company to consolidate volume with one forwarder, negotiate one set of rates, and manage one customs relationship. Multi-origin sourcing breaks all three of those efficiencies at once. Freight volumes per lane shrink, which weakens rate leverage. Customs paperwork multiplies, since country-of-origin rules, HS code interpretations, and documentation requirements differ from one country to the next. Overseas 창고 needs often expand too, because a brand that used to hold inventory in one location now wants safety stock positioned closer to each new sourcing region.
This is precisely where the right freight forwarding partner earns its keep. A forwarder that can consolidate shipments from multiple Asian origins into a single ocean or air program, manage customs clearance consistently across lanes, and coordinate overseas warehousing on the receiving end effectively rebuilds the economies of scale that diversification tends to erode. Without that kind of partner, many companies end up trading tariff risk for operational risk, which is not the trade they set out to make.
How Topway Shipping Supports Companies Through the Diversification Process
Topway Shipping has been working at the intersection of China’s export economy and cross-border e-commerce logistics since 2010, and the company is headquartered in Shenzhen — a vantage point that puts it close to both the traditional China manufacturing base and the newer sourcing corridors feeding into Southeast Asia. The founding team brings more than 15 years of experience in international logistics and customs clearance, with particular depth in China-to-US transportation, which is the exact lane most affected by the tariff pressure driving today’s diversification trend.
For a brand navigating a multi-origin supply chain, the value of a forwarder like Topway Shipping is less about any single service and more about coverage across the entire chain. Topway’s offering spans first-leg transportation from the factory, overseas warehousing near the destination market, customs clearance on both ends, and last-mile delivery to the final customer, meaning a client does not need to stitch together separate vendors for each stage of the journey. On the ocean freight side, Topway provides flexible full-container-load and less-than-container-load services from China to major ports worldwide, which matters a great deal for companies that are shrinking their per-lane volumes as they spread sourcing across more countries and need a partner willing to handle smaller, more frequent shipments without losing cost efficiency.
That flexibility is particularly relevant for the “China plus one” companies described earlier in this article — brands that are not abandoning China but are running it alongside a second or third sourcing base. A single ocean freight and warehousing partner that already understands Chinese export documentation, customs procedures, and US-bound transportation can absorb a lot of the coordination burden that would otherwise fall on an internal logistics team stretched thin across new geographies.
A Practical Checklist Before Diversifying a Supply Chain
Companies that have gone through this process successfully tend to treat diversification as a logistics project first and a sourcing project second, since the sourcing decision is usually the easy part compared to keeping the goods moving reliably afterward.
Before adding a new origin country, it is worth mapping the total landed cost of goods from that country, not just the factory price, since freight rates, customs duties, and inland trucking costs vary widely and can offset apparent savings. It also pays to confirm that a forwarding partner can actually service the new lane end-to-end, rather than assuming that a company strong in China-US freight will automatically be equally strong in Vietnam-US or Mexico-US freight. Inventory planning deserves early attention too, since running parallel sourcing bases usually means holding buffer stock in more than one location for a transition period, and that additional working capital needs to be budgeted for rather than discovered midway through the shift.
Finally, it helps to resist an all-or-nothing mindset. The data reviewed earlier in this article shows that the companies reporting the best results are rarely the ones that exited China entirely; they are the ones that kept a strong China base for what China still does best — complex, high-volume, well-supported manufacturing — while adding one or two alternative sourcing points for the categories most exposed to tariffs or geopolitical risk.
맺음말
The 77% statistic is real, but it describes a direction of travel rather than a finished journey. Most companies diversifying away from China are doing so gradually, keeping a meaningful China presence while building parallel capacity elsewhere, and the results so far are genuinely mixed: clear wins on tariff exposure, uneven results on cost and speed, and resilience benefits that will only be fully proven the next time global trade hits real turbulence. What is consistent across nearly every case study, though, is that the logistics side of diversification is harder than the sourcing side, and companies that underestimate that complexity often end up giving back a good portion of their tariff savings to freight inefficiency and customs friction. A forwarding partner with deep China expertise and genuine multi-lane capability, of the kind Topway Shipping has built since 2010, is often the difference between diversification that works on paper and diversification that works in the warehouse.
자주 묻는 질문
Q: Does the 77% figure mean most companies have stopped sourcing from China? A: No. It measures companies that have shifted at least part of their sourcing to other countries, not companies that have exited China entirely. Most are running a “China plus one” model rather than a full replacement.
Q: Which alternative country is best for replacing China-based sourcing? A: It depends on the target market and product type. Vietnam suits labor-intensive goods like textiles and electronics assembly, Mexico suits US-focused brands that need speed, and India suits large-scale, labor-intensive production, but none fully replicates China’s component ecosystem on its own.
Q: Is diversifying supply chains actually reducing costs? A: Results are mixed. Tariff savings are often real, but new supplier relationships, smaller shipment volumes, and added customs complexity can offset some of those savings, especially in the first year or two.
Q: How can a freight forwarder help with a multi-origin supply chain? A: A forwarder that offers first-leg transportation, overseas warehousing, customs clearance, and last-mile delivery across multiple lanes can consolidate volume and reduce the coordination burden that comes with sourcing from several countries at once.
Q: Is China still a viable sourcing base in 2026? A: Yes. Despite the diversification trend, China retains unmatched manufacturing scale and component density for complex products, which is why most companies are supplementing rather than replacing their China sourcing.
