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Coronavirus: China’s car part makers face collapsing orders, as factories around the world kill their engines
- As companies from Ford to Toyota to Volkswagen shut their global plants amid coronavirus outbreak, the impact resonates in China
- In 2019, China exported US$53 billion worth of auto parts, but now firms are having orders cancelled in the US and Europe
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After a nationwide shutdown in February, car parts exporter Rita Xiao was thrilled to join the bandwagon of factories resuming work across China in March, as the country’s coronavirus crisis began to cool.
But she is now wrought with anxiety, with the virus ravaging her clients in the United States and Europe. Xiao, along with many other Chinese exporters, is feeling the force of the dreaded second shock wave from the pandemic which has closed car factories across the world, in the sort of synchronised shutdown never before seen.
Orders in March fell by about 70 per cent, the Xiao said, adding that buyers were also requesting a suspension of shipments on the orders they’d already made. Her company, Chongqing Bona Auto Parts, exports a range of car parts to countries including the United States, which accounts for 20 per cent of overseas sales.
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“They did not say they were cancelling the orders, but instead asked us not to ship the goods. But they did not proceed with the payment either. We now have goods sitting in the warehouse and may have to wait for a few months to know what’s next,” she said.
About 1,300 kilometres away in Guangzhou, Lindsay, a sales representative at Guangzhou Fengming Auto Parts Company who declined to give her surname, is suffering from the same problem.
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