be spun off from the parent into a separate company next month.

Admittedly, Primavera and Ant will buy only a small minority stake in Yum China — less than 6 percent initially. Still, that emphasizes the difficulty for McDonald’s, which is seeking a buyer for the whole business.

Unlike Yum, McDonald’s has no plans for a listing of its China operations. In common with its rival, though, the company has realized that local partners and franchising are the way forward. Most McDonald’s restaurants in China, Hong Kong and South Korea are directly owned by the company. The chain aims eventually to have 95 percent of restaurants in Asia under local ownership, it said in March.

The conundrum for McDonald’s is that handing over the reins to local partners may risk its brand, already dented by a 2014 food-safety scare. The company has imposed stringent deal conditions such as a three-year ban on senior management changes, Bloomberg reported in May — though this has had the effect of deterring bidders.

McDonald’s has attracted only a few Chinese suitors and none has the online heft that Ant brings. The interested parties (their private equity partners aside) aren’t known for either online consumer expertise or retail exposure. The roster so far includes bad-loan manager China Cinda Asset Management and dairy producer Beijing Sanyuan Foods. Sanyuan’s largest shareholder is state-owned Beijing Capital Agribusiness Group, which runs some McDonald’s restaurants in Beijing. Chinese state conglomerate Citic Group, which has only a modest retail presence, is also in the running.

There’s little danger McDonald’s would ever have to retreat from China. The chain has been chalking up gains in same-store sales this year, after several quarters of declines. It remains China’s second-most-popular fast-food brand, according to Euromonitor. Still, both McDonald’s and Yum face a mounting threat as Chinese-style fast food from brands such as Dicos, (whose fried chicken retails for a third less than KFC) and CNHLS gain market share.

The search for a partner is key. McDonald’s needs one that’s nimble enough to adapt not just to changing tastes but to the rise in online shopping, especially through mobile devices. Now that Alibaba is spoken for, the list of potential Internet partners is short. A do-it-yourself e-commerce operation in China hardly looks viable. That’s a lesson Wal-Mart took to heart in June when it decided to sell its Yihaodian online grocer to JD.com, China’s second-largest Internet retailer after Alibaba. Yihaodian’s growth had withered after Wal-Mart bought the site in 2012.

Final bids for McDonald’s China business are due next week, and a new-economy partner could yet emerge. The next best option would be a group with retail expertise and a nationwide reach. Anything less, and McDonald’s may start looking like leftover pickings. There’s not much less appetizing than fast food that’s been allowed to go cold.