[rdm_blackhole]

> But what annoys me the most about the article is this constant praise of „China Speed“, Cost-Advantages and Love of the Free Market, as if not every single Chinese Automaker, including its Suppliers down to the tiniest screw is a State owned entity, massively subsidized and in general part of a rigged market

Do you think other countries do not subsidize their own automakers? What about the US government bailing out the entire US auto-industry during the GFC? To this day the French state owns 15% of Renault-Nissan and has given this company many tax breaks for the last 30 years or so just to keep some of the production in France.

It's too easy to dunk on China when the rest of the world has been doing the same exact thing for god knows how long but nobody had a problem with that as long as the EU/US auto-makers were making money hand over fist. Now, that it is changing, all of sudden everyone is screaming that China is the devil when it basically follows the same exact playbook.

As for free market argument, it is arguably harder to compete as a Chinese company in China given the cut-throat competition happening now than in the west and contrary to most of the western governments who would be too scared to let Ford or Renault fail for example, the Chinese government is very happy to see that some of its auto companies are failing because it means that the remaining ones are performing much better and have to keep innovating to succeed.

That is why the Chinese automakers are steamrolling the competition at the moment, they give people what they want: innovative products at a fair price point.

As it's been said many times in the past, don't hate the player, hate the game.

[woodpanel]

> the French state owns 15% of Renault-Nissan

"15% of a distressed key industry player" is a completely different ballgame than being an actual SOE, with insane amounts of subsidies let alone absense of any red-tape for these party-run corporations, and a market that forces foreign car manufacturers to set-up shop as a "joint-venture" were the "joint" is more akin to being sucked out, never allowed to be more than 49% owned by the foreign company and a general impossibility (unless you do some HK trickery) to transfer any profits made in China out of China.

What you are doing is not just intellectual dishonest, not just whataboutism, it is comparing apples with oranges.

Edit: And we haven'T even begun discussing the glaringly state promoted IP-theft.

[rdm_blackhole]

Your comment is all over the place and you are moving the goal posts quite a bit.

Since we are talking about Renault specifically, I will assume that you are not French otherwise you would not have written your comment.

Basically, it comes down to this, France is Renault and Renault is France. The French state has a 15% stake because it wants to influence the board, keep jobs in France and it will do that even if Renault loses money just like it did before Renault was privatized in 1996.

The French state will never let Renault fail and will always be there as a backstop if push comes to shove which is to say, it is there to make sure that if Renault needs cash it will give it. In 2021, at the height of the COVID period, the French state was ready to re-nationalize Renault instead of seeing it dissapear if necessary.

Then we have the countless subsidies and programs created all over the years so that French people buy newer vehicles from EU car makers. The same was done after 2008 when there was the massive cash for clunkers program to stimulate demand.

All of this money is coming from the state coffers, taxes paid to subsidize the purchase of new cars which benefits Renault and Peugeot immensely since these two brands are very strong in France.

So even though in practice the French state doesn't own a majority stake, it may as well because it will do anything it can to protect and help Renault keep it's market share.

Furthermore, nothing at Renault gets done without the French state's approval. If the French government thinks a merger is not good, it won't happen. If Renault wants to lay off people, it will have to through the government first, the unions second and only then will it happen.

As for the part of your comment regarding the profits out of China, that was not part of my response and not part of the original comment either so I am just going to ignore it.

Regarding the IP theft, every car makers steals from the competition. My uncle's job at Renault was to buy cars from their competitors and take them apart bit by bit to understand everything that was under the hood and then make recommendations to his bosses about all the new tech they found so that they could build their own version of it and include it in their newer models.

The point of the joint venture is moot. This is China's business model. If you want to sell cars there, you have to do it their way. It's the same exact playbook that the EU is using against the US tech companies by forcing them to comply with EU regulations if they want to keep distributing software and products here.

Don't want to comply, then no one is forcing you to do it. You just won't sell anything in China and that is that. Same goes for the EU.

Finally as another commenter said above, every country worth their salt on this planet is protecting to some extent their domestic champions, whether in the arms, space, car, food industry and whatever else. It's just the normal thing to do.

So you can complain about China all you want, it is doing exactly what the rest of the world has done for decades, but the difference now is that the Chinese brands are no longer the laughing stock of the car market.

They are leading in terms of price, quality and innovation and this reaction from the US government and the EU to apply tariffs on Chinese automakers is just a desperate attempt at stopping the flood of superior products.

That in itself is ironic because since Trump was elected and then re-elected, it's been a constant thing from the EU politicians to rally against the US tariffs just so that they can turn around and implement tariffs on China themselves.

When Germany sold millions of cars in China, that was just good business, when China does it in the EU, they are "dumping" their "over-production". When the US implements tariffs on EU companies and products, that is because Trump is an idiot who likes to start trade wars but when the EU does it on China, then it's simply "protecting" its industry.

I am honestly sick and tired of this double-speak, do as I say not as I do type of attitude coming from the most western countries. The western companies should stop whining and try to compete with China instead of crying because China just beat them at their own game.