Do Chinese companies now have to save our car jobs? | BYD in Talks With Stellantis and Others About Taking Europe Plants.

This is a post for two articles, one from BILD and one from Bloomberg. I’ve combined them because they complement each other.

BILD: Some of Germany’s car factories are currently not running because of high energy costs, labour costs, etc. All the woes of German industry we are probably all familiar with by now. As such, both German companies and German politicians in regional governments have floated allowing Chinese companies to take over these factories in order to revitalize this unused capacity.

Bloomberg: Details for which specific car companies wish to get Chinese companies to run their factories include Stellantis and Maserati. This comes on the back of existing agreements between European and Chinese car companies to work together on car manufacturing. One key point brought up in this article is that Chinese companies prefer to run the factories by themselves rather than do joint ventures:

>BYD would prefer to operate the plants on its own rather than via joint ventures as it’s “easier,” Li said.

This is another example of divergence between the interests of the EU government and the interests of companies with regards to China. Whereas the EU government is concerned about supply chains and de-risking, these companies are worried about competitiveness and R&D, both of which are better in China, hence why Volkswagen and other companies are increasingly outsourcing not just manufacturing, [but R&D as well](https://archive.ph/TC8Da)

This also conflicts with the Industrial Accelerator Act planned by the EU, which plans for joint ventures with Chinese companies, not just outright takeovers.