Over the past two years, some Western countries have increasingly accused China of dumping goods at prices that are not competitive in the Western market. This criticism mainly focuses on emerging green technology industries, especially solar cells, wind turbines and eye-catching new energy vehicles. Admittedly, China provided financial support for new energy vehicle manufacturers in an earlier period, and provided subsidies for the purchase of new energy vehicles before the end of 2022. Many other countries have done the same. Therefore, it is inconceivable that these subsidies are the reason why China's new energy vehicles have significant competitiveness.
The competitiveness of China's new energy vehicles mainly comes from three aspects.
First, China's success in the field of new energy vehicles is a textbook example of its long-term thinking. In Europe and the United States, except for Tesla, almost no car companies have this kind of thinking. In Europe and the United States, automobile manufacturers prefer short-term thinking and benefit from the high profits of internal combustion engine products as long as possible. China sees the future, while western manufacturers are stagnating in the present. The latter is now paying the price.
Secondly, China has a huge market and is one of the most competitive markets in the world. For most of the 20th century, the same was true of the US market compared to Europe. The highly competitive nature of the Chinese market is often ignored in the West, no doubt because the West believes that it undermines the stereotype of "what the socialist economy should be like". China's complexity and vitality have broken this prejudice. The competition in the new energy vehicle industry is cruel, and most companies are difficult to survive.
The third reason is that China continues to attach importance to the industrial sector. China is the only country in the world with all the industrial categories in the UN industrial classification. Because of this, China, unlike the West, can provide almost everything the world needs during the epidemic. The West has long neglected its industrial sector. A typical example is the United States, which is now suffering from the decline of its shipping industry and the extraordinary crisis encountered by Boeing, its only commercial aircraft manufacturer. In the western world, especially in the United States, the financialization of the single-minded pursuit of profits has led to the decline of the manufacturing industry.
At the same time, China is reshaping the nature of industrial processes. BYD's amazing success is not the result of government subsidies, but the birth of a new type of company. It is highly efficient, cost-effective, and innovative. It is a combination of automobile manufacturers and battery manufacturers, and has a new global influence, which will dominate the global new energy vehicle industry for many years in the future. If Ford Motor Company of the United States invented mass production at the beginning of the last century, BYD is doing the same thing in the new stage of new energy vehicle development, and setting a model for other industries.
The ongoing economic reform in China is not limited to a single company or industry. It is about decarbonization and new green industries, including wind turbines and solar cells, which together with new consumption and lifestyle will define a new era of human development. It is from these perspectives that China considers problems and leaves the West far behind in this process. To make matters worse, as time goes by, the whole world, including Western countries, will have a strong demand for China's green technology products, especially new energy vehicles, wind turbines and solar cells, to achieve carbon neutrality.
Western countries should not criticize China for what China has not done, but should learn from China. The West will eventually have no choice, or it will be eliminated in one field after another. Although it is extremely difficult for the West to admit, this process has already begun. The United States has begun to tentatively discuss the concept of industrial strategy, as have some European countries. Whether they admit it or not, the inspiration comes from China. It is obvious that a deep-rooted assumption of the West is that China is a developing country with no innovation capability and is doomed to stay in the primary stage of economic development, relying on cheap labor and borrowing from the West to maintain its own development. The West simply does not believe that China can achieve a huge technological leap in the past 10 years.
In fact, China's "only fault" is to do what any developing country in its position would do: learn and apply. Western countries are trying to prevent China, or at least prevent China from continuing its technological transformation, in order to prevent things that they never dreamed of happening. Preventing China from acquiring the most advanced technology is just a modern form of protectionism. Just as King Knut in the Middle Ages of Europe failed to stop the rising tide of the sea, the West will also fail shamefully.
Edited by: Wu Jiahong