What happens is that Chinese prices are not real because batteries and EV are subsidised by the Chinese Government. Also Chinese market is full of restrictions for foreign companies.
If China wants to subsidize the US renewables transition, why shouldn't we let them pay for it? Isn't that draining funds from the Chinese government directly?
It's called predatory pricing -- you buy cheap now, pay later when they come to recoup their cost. It won't drain their bank if they end up undercutting/destroying all local competitor and we become dependent on them.
This is not necessarily a problem if we can all peacefully coexist. China has a history of weaponizing their dominant market position to settle geopolitical/market disputes -- eg, rare earth metal ban against Japan in 2010; China's recent graphite "export control" to protect Chinese EV companies' business in markets abroad.
The fact that China practically banned all foreign EV battery makers from local EV market and forced EV OEMs to use locally made batteries by local battery makers to dominate the global battery market since 2016 under Xi's Make-In-China 2025 adds to the view that this isn't purely about saving the planet or making affordable EVs for the rest of us.
The US already has been countering China's every anticompetitive, discriminatory policy measure by more or less equal response: for instance, eliminating all subsidies on EVs with critical minerals sourced from non-free trading nations and banning Chinese EV/battery companies, and so on -- or otherwise known as Biden's IRA (vs Xi's Made-In-China 2025).
I'm not necessarily taking sides, but if you feel that the US's policy is bad, that's probably because China's original policy was also bad. If you were ok with China's exclusionary EV policy since 2016, you probably shouldn't be crying about the US's policy today since it's designed to mirror China's.
Do note however that, in March, China did file a WTO complaint accusing the US (IRA) of doing what China has been doing past decade under MIC 2025 -- misusing subsidies to force local content, local production (aka, in international trade lingo, it's called "local/domestic content requirement"). So I'm a bit troubled by China's double-standard.
Sigh, this old trope again. The Chinese government stopped subsidizing EV purchases in 2022. There are some tax breaks, but they're also getting phased out. Neither is or was ever all that different from the various EV subsidies found in most Western countries.
China's EV subsidies have existed in various shapes and forms since 2009 -- they are always phasing out; then renewed, extended every 3-4 years. The last "direct purchase" subsidies ended on Jan 1, 2023; it was however extended as a "tax credit" in June 2023 for another 4 years with $72+B budget. This is also in the same article you cited (see translated below):
Extension of the preferential tax policy for car purchases The total reduction and exemption is expected to reach 520 billion yuan —— Precision to provide assistance to the expansion of new energy vehicles 2023-06-21
The Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Taxation, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued a joint announcement to clearly continue and optimize the tax reduction and exemption policy for the purchase of new energy vehicles to support the development of the new energy automobile industry and promote automobile consumption. According to preliminary estimates, through the implementation of the extension policy, the total scale of vehicle purchase tax relief from 2024 to 2027 will reach 520 billion yuan.
Now, in addition to this, there also various industry subsidies, export credit/refund/rebates, and other financial instruments by gov't that are difficult to account for (because they are not public info).
It does not need to be EV purchases. When the company I worked for went to China, it paid 0% taxes for several years. This is a subsidy. I worked there, and everything was subsidised, the steel and aluminium plants for example. If as engineer you don't pay taxes on your salary, you are subsidised.