China\u2019s electric vehicle (EV) industry sits at the centre of numerous economic and geopolitical trends: consumer spending, environmental protection, trade policy, high-end manufacturing, technology and more. In this short series, we assess the current state of the sector within these broader contexts. Here, Emma Ma examines the forces driving higher exports and lower domestic sales.<\/p>\n
Wang Wenfei, a 30-year-old chef from central China\u2019s Henan province, had long dreamed of buying a new car. So, when he received his annual bonus in February, he decided to splash out as a gift to himself after a decade of hard work at a restaurant in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
\u201cA comfortable new car that I can drive home to Henan for Chinese New Year was all I wanted,\u201d he said, setting himself a budget of 100,000 yuan (US$14,700).<\/p>\n
However, just weeks later, Wang received an unpleasant surprise: the government had slashed its subsidy for new car purchases by 33 per cent to 10,000 yuan. Meanwhile, petrol prices were rising amid the war in the Middle East \u2013 and his employer had declined to give him a pay rise.<\/p>\n
Reluctantly, he decided to put his dream on hold.<\/p>\n
Wang is far from alone. China is now the world\u2019s largest car exporter, but sales at home have hit the skids in recent months, as the government scales back its subsidy programme and consumers remain reluctant to spend amid a shaky job market and prolonged property downturn.<\/p>\n
The trend is creating a headache for Chinese carmakers like BYD and Chery Automobile \u2013 pushing them to lean more heavily on overseas markets at a time of rising trade tensions \u2013 as well as complicating Beijing\u2019s efforts to rebalance China\u2019s economy towards domestic consumption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s electric vehicle (EV) industry sits at the centre of numerous economic and geopolitical trends: consumer spending, environmental…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1246,550,941,28,21546,144,134219,162856,330792,101,18758,1076,594,6797,28222,100690,40650],"class_list":["post-775622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-australia","tag-beijing","tag-brazil","tag-business","tag-byd","tag-china","tag-china-passenger-car-association","tag-chinese-new-year","tag-cui-dongshu","tag-economy","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-goldman-sachs","tag-henan","tag-hsbc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}