China is drawing a road map for EV-fuelled growth – and wants global cooperation to oil the wheels

Name: China’s BYD overtakes Tesla as world’s largest EV maker
Uploaded: 2024-02-07T15:00:13.000Z
Duration: 1 min 11 s
Description: China’s BYD overtakes Tesla as world’s largest EV maker

With the spectre of trade restrictions looming, China has laid out a plan to keep its EV sector growing through a broader global presence

Domestic overcapacity means exports must continue if the industry is to serve as a new engine for economic development

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China’s rapidly growing EV sector as seen as a potential growth engine for a sputtering economy. Photo: Bloomberg

Frank Chenin Shanghai

Published: 11:00pm, 7 Feb 2024Updated: 10:17am, 27 Sep 2024

To guard against potential trade restrictions, maintain its status as the world’s top car exporter and transform the sector into a sustainable growth driver, China has laid out plans to widen its footprint in global electric vehicle (EV) development.

Heightened international cooperation, increasing the country’s say in standard-setting and measures to help home-grown manufacturers cope with looming export barriers are among the 18 planks listed in a document issued on Wednesday by nine state agencies, led by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce.

Beijing is optimistic that China’s freewheeling EV industry can serve as a dynamo for an economy that faces an uphill battle to achieve sustained recovery. But an overcapacity problem is weighing on the sector’s prospects, even as domestic competition intensifies.

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China’s BYD overtakes Tesla as world’s largest EV maker

As companies are betting on overseas markets to sustain the EV boom, interventions from those markets’ governments could drop roadblocks on the path to dominance.

The European Union launched an anti-subsidy investigation in October, alleging Chinese EV prices were being kept “artificially low”. Last month, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also labelled China’s EVs “a risk” for information security, hinting at restrictions down the road that would open a new front for trade and tech conflict.

The new document encourages cooperation to counter these curbs, as well as protect exports. “Set up R&D centres overseas,” it said, “[and] establish strategic collaboration with foreign research institutions and industrial clusters through talent training and exchange to better help China’s EV sector to integrate.”

Exports are key for the EV industry to continue to flourish … Beijing is moving to defend its advantage

Qu Ke, CCB International

A researcher with Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies said China is anxious not to let the US and EU slam the door on EV exports and curb the country’s major growth industry.