New Delhi, July 4 -- China is still too big for foreign consumer companies to quit. But it's becoming too competitive to run from abroad.

For years, Haagen-Dazs in China wasn't just ice cream. It was an affordable luxury, a mall-store treat that signaled taste and status. That era is fading.

General Mills has agreed to sell its Haagen-Dazs shops in mainland China to a Chinese investor group that includes Ningji, a fast-growing local tea chain. General Mills will keep the brand and continue supplying ice cream through retail and food-service channels, but the shops are moving into local hands.

Lin Yue, chief consultant at Lingyan Management Consulting, said the move is a strategic effort to "shed a burden" by divesting a loss-making bus...