Forum: Companies must increase investment in branding

Chinese companies should increase investment in their branding to have more influence on the international stage, delegates at an industry forum were told on Thursday.

Among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese brands, very few have become genuinely global, and big enough to overtake their Western counterparts, Wang Tongsan, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, told the China Brand Forum held in Beijing in his keynote speech.

"It's a national strategy and economically important that our leading Chinese names continue to appreciate in terms of brand value, raise their level of recognition, and further boost their global influence," he said.