Managing The Dragon

2018 is shaping up to be a tough year for the automobile industry in China.

For the first nine months of 2017, total sales of trucks, buses, and passenger cars in China were up 4.5 percent to 20.2 million units, close to the 5 percent increase that most auto analysts are predicting for the full year. China is on track to be the world’s largest car market for the eighth consecutive year.

“If the policymakers and the capital providers are both telling you to do it (i.e. build EVs)…then you’d better get on and just do it.”

2016 turned out surprisingly well for China’s automakers. Among other factors, auto sales benefitted from the cut in the purchase tax on small cars initiated by the Chinese government in the final quarter of 2015 to boost flagging demand. The resulting surge in sales carried over into 2016, and when rumors surfaced later in the […]

While car sales in the United States increased by a sizzling 27 percent in February, China’s auto industry managed to eke out only a single-digit increase, a rare occurrence in China’s auto industry. According to Kate Zhu, auto analyst for Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd., passenger vehicle sales totaled 772,441 units in February, up 7.4 percent […]

One of the bigger news items this year has been the rising level of wages in China. Higher labor costs, in combination with well publicized strikes and incidents of labor unrest at several foreign-owned factories, have prompted many companies to think the unthinkable — moving manufacturing from China to seemingly greener pastures in countries like […]

The team at JFP Holdings had the honor of working with Wang Xia, Chairman of the Automotive Committee of the China Council for the Promotion of Trade, over the past year to organize the inaugural Global Auto Forum (“GAF”), which was held in the city of Chengdu in the People’s Republic of China last Thursday […]

As the dawn of the new century, a new technology promised to fundamentally change global economics. Government leaders in the United States and China, the two largest economies in the world, believed that companies from their respective countries should lead in the development of this new technology. By 2010, two national champions, one from each […]

While researching China’s wind turbine market, Liam Denning, who writes for the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column, noticed that Chinese companies have been gaining market share at the expense of their foreign counterparts. According to Denning’s findings, foreign companies’ share of the wind turbines sold in China dropped to 13 percent in […]

President John F. Kennedy is credited with coining the phrase that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” With sales up by 45 percent during the first seven months of 2010, there are no losers in China’s passenger car market — at least not yet. This year’s growth is due to an economy that is still […]