With the increase in overseas acquisitions by Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs), corporations face the challenge of designing and building global architecture to enhance their performance in post-acquisition integration. A well-known design rule that CMNEs could follow is the mirroring hypothesis. However, the effectiveness of this hypothesis in aligning a CMNE’s organizational structure with the underlying technical system after acquiring a new subsidiary remains unclear. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to analyze 34 cross-border acquisitions by CMNEs, we clarify the boundary conditions of the mirroring hypothesis and identify four archetypes of design patterns, namely, modularized mirroring, integral mirroring, mirror breaking, and mirror misted-up. We also identify the respective performance implications of these archetypes on the post-acquisition integration of CMNEs. This study presents a comprehensive assessment of the mirroring hypothesis and contributes to the discussion on global architecture design by emerging multinational enterprises in general.