TCL's story begins in 1981 in Huizhou, Guangdong, China, when Li Dongsheng and Luca Situ founded the company as an audio cassette manufacturer under the name TTK. The company adopted the name TCL in 1985, drawing on the initials of Telecom Corporation Limited — a rebrand that set the stage for one of the most remarkable growth stories in Chinese consumer electronics.

Under Li Dongsheng's leadership since 1996, TCL expanded rapidly and boldly onto the global stage, forming a major joint venture with France's Thomson SA in 2003 and partnering with Alcatel on mobile phones the following year, steps that helped establish TCL as a genuinely international brand rather than a purely domestic one. The company built vertical integration into its core strategy, developing its own display technology through subsidiary TCL CSOT, spanning everything from LCD to AMOLED and pioneering MicroLED research.