Chinese cooling devices have become a massive hit across Europe.
European netizens were recently left speechless by a photo from rural China. The image showed an air conditioner mounted on a pigsty wall, captioned: "Pigs in rural China enjoy better conditions than patients in French hospitals."
On social media, jokes about Europe's extreme heat are endless. Someone posted an illustration of the Chinese mythic hero Hou Yi shooting down the suns, with the caption: "A solution Europeans are seriously discussing right now." Others compiled a "survival guide for Europeans in the heat": soak bedsheets in ice water, put the cat in the fridge (for one minute only), borrow a fan from a neighbor, or stand in a supermarket's freezer section for an hour pretending to shop.
The summer of 2026 has brought the earliest "super heatwave" in Europe's meteorological records. Meteorologists have named this heatwave the "heat dome," where a high-pressure system acts like a lid trapping hot air over the continent.
Countries including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain have successively broken high-temperature records. Daytime temperatures in many areas have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, with little relief at night.
Social systems are beginning to falter under the heat: hospital emergency rooms are overloaded; railway tracks in Germany have deformed due to thermal expansion, causing widespread delays; the UK Prime Minister's office issued an emergency notice where the first piece of advice was simply "close the curtains." The heatwave is tearing at the fabric of European society.
Unsurprisingly, Chinese cooling devices are selling out across Europe. The popular "Four Great Cooling Kings" in Europe almost all originate from Chinese factories.
Portable split air conditioners, represented by Midea's PortaSplit, are marketed as requiring no drilling or installation, fitting European windows, and being plug-and-play. Handheld bladeless fans with semiconductor cooling plates, which can blow cool air, remain in short supply despite prices exceeding 100 euros. Portable ice makers that don't need fixed water pipes, automatically producing ice when water is added and plugged in, have transformed from kitchen gadgets into summer essentials. Home ice cream makers have seen sales double year-on-year on major European e-commerce platforms, with a French influencer calling homemade ice cream the most dignified way to cope with the heatwave.
This frenzy is not the first. In the summer of 2025, Chinese cooling products already experienced a wave of panic buying in Europe. That year, according to cross-border e-commerce platform data, the Gross Merchandise Value of Chinese cooling products exported to Europe grew by 77% year-on-year. In the first half of 2025, China's air conditioner exports to the European Union reached $3.76 billion, a record high for the period and a 43.2% increase year-on-year. By 2026, the growth rate is still accelerating.
Of course, the most prominent product remains Midea's PortaSplit air conditioner. Reportedly, in the last week of June 2026, the PortaSplit portable split air conditioner showed as "out of stock" on Amazon pages in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the UK, with delivery wait times for some models extending to August.
Local scalpers in Europe seized the opportunity, reselling units on secondary platforms for three to five times the original price. A PortaSplit air conditioner originally priced around 6,000 yuan was resold for up to nearly 30,000 yuan. Some programmers even spontaneously created a webpage to monitor inventory changes of various PortaSplit models on Amazon in Germany, France, and the UK in real-time, sending immediate notifications upon restocking.
Public data shows that Midea air conditioner sales in the European market grew by 35% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, with the French market seeing a 68% increase. This figure is estimated to have continued rising in 2026.
Understanding the European Context
To understand why the PortaSplit became a hit, one must first examine why air conditioning is not widespread in Europe. The first reason is climate inertia. Summers in cities like London, Paris, and Berlin historically were not hot enough to necessitate air conditioning for survival. The design logic of older European buildings has always been to retain heat, not dissipate it, with features like thick walls, small windows, and high ceilings.
Second, building regulations pose a challenge. European city centers have many historical buildings and protected districts where exterior walls cannot be altered freely. Installing a traditional split air conditioner requires drilling, piping, and mounting an outdoor unit. In many apartment buildings in Germany, France, and Italy, even drilling a hole for an AC unit may require approval from homeowner associations, property management, or local planning authorities.
Third, the high rate of renting is a factor. Countries like Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands have high rental rates. Tenants typically cannot make permanent alterations to properties. Landlords previously had little incentive to install air conditioning as it was not a traditional standard feature in European rentals. Some building rules and leases explicitly forbid externally mounted equipment.
Fourth, cost is a significant barrier. Installing cooling equipment in Europe requires certified technicians, and handling fluorinated refrigerants requires specific qualifications. During a heatwave, installation appointments can be booked for weeks. The cost is naturally high. In markets like Germany, a standard split air conditioner itself might cost only a few hundred euros, but with labor, permits, and installation, the total can easily exceed 1,500 euros. Coupled with high electricity prices in Europe, many families hesitate.
Fifth, there is a sense of environmental guilt. A significant portion of consumers have long associated air conditioning with high energy consumption, carbon emissions, and urban heat island effects. When the weather was tolerable, not using AC even carried a sense of moral superiority—until bedrooms became too hot to sleep in, and survival instincts began to override moral concerns.
Therefore, Europe's low air conditioning penetration rate results from a combination of climate, old housing, rental systems, installation costs, and environmental attitudes.
The Key to Success
The Midea PortaSplit air conditioner succeeded primarily because it addressed most of these pain points. Its design is a hybrid between a traditional split system and a window unit: the indoor unit is a wheeled floor cabinet, and the outdoor unit is a heat exchange module that hangs on the window frame, connected by a flexible hose.
The entire installation requires no tools, no drilling, and no F-Gas certified technician. Users can unpack it, hang the outdoor unit on the window frame, plug in the indoor unit, and turn it on—the whole process takes about 20 minutes. When moving, it can be disassembled and taken along. "No drilling, no technician, no house modification" became a lifesaving trifecta for European consumers.
It is usable by renters (causing no property damage), installable in historical buildings (no contact with exterior walls), requires no waiting for a technician (DIY), and eliminates installation fees (saving 1,500 to 2,000 euros). A Midea PortaSplit has even become a social currency in Europe, with European netizens exclaiming "God bless Midea" and calling it "rarer than Pokémon." Chinese netizens also quipped: "We thought the US would save Europe, but in the end, it was Midea that saved Europe."
The explosive popularity of the PortaSplit once again highlights how crucial effective localization is for Chinese companies expanding overseas. It is reported that Midea established a European R&D center in Stuttgart, Germany, responsible for engineering and regulatory compliance, and a design center in Milan, Italy, focused on aesthetics. This "dual-city R&D" structure is key to Midea's "Local for Local" strategy, building local teams in Europe that truly understand the market rather than sending Chinese engineers on temporary assignments.
Looking Ahead
Even when the heatwave subsides, the business opportunity remains. Household air conditioning penetration in Europe is still extremely low, below 20% in most countries. Experts suggest European summers are unlikely to return to their former coolness. This situation has opened a lucrative opportunity for many Chinese brands expanding overseas and, of course, reignited debates among Europeans about environmental concerns.
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