As I have detailed before, the global car manufacturing industry is the largest and most impactful manufacturing sector, with huge spin-offs in electronics, software, electric battery and general mass manufacturing technologies. With the replacement of internal combustion engines (ICE) with electric propulsion system vehicles (EV), the area in which Chinese car manufacturers lagged was replaced with an area where they could leap-frog (along with Tesla). Already in the Chinese car market, the largest car market in the world, the sales of ICE cars have peaked and are falling:
As a lifelong car nut and Sinophile, I enjoyed this thoroughly!
Many, many thanks for saving me the pain of thinking and giving me the gift of glib assurance when I predict the future of the car industry.
On a more serious note, do you know the year Beijing told manufacturers about the switchover?
I have the impression that it was at least ten years ago and foreign manufacturers, accustomed to resisting government regulations, did very little to prepare for E-Day. Then, about 6 years ago, Dr. Merkel flew to Beijing and begged, unsuccessfully, for an extension.
EVs gonna save lotsa imported hydrocarbons, too. Juicy.
The Chinese government started consumer subsidies around 2010, there was a Merkel visit there in 2008, so maybe around this time. If Japan had not destroyed the MITI centred managed capitalism in the 1990s, and allowed the Central Bank to become predominant, perhaps they could have made the same turn. But thats what the US demanded, and the Toyoda dynasty still rules Toyota through its incompetent progeny, as does the Quandt family with respect to BMW. As an aside, the Quandt's fortune was built under Nazism with extensive use of slave labour, a link which much of Germany's elite still have.
Did Japan destroy MITI or was it killed off at the request of the US? Washington has always hated sub-national bodies that serve their citizens well but frustrate US capitalists.
From the "Princes of the Yen" documentary looks like both the Japanese Central Bank monetary orthodoxies in combination with the US that wanted to destroy Japan's challenge to US technological supremacy. The US also used 100% tariffs on memory chips and "gentleman's agreements" on imports together with a massive revaluation of the Yen to take out the Japanese challenge. The Chinese kept the control of the financial system within Party control and are not occupied by 10,000s of US troops, so the US could not do the same to China.
As a lifelong car nut and Sinophile, I enjoyed this thoroughly!
Many, many thanks for saving me the pain of thinking and giving me the gift of glib assurance when I predict the future of the car industry.
On a more serious note, do you know the year Beijing told manufacturers about the switchover?
I have the impression that it was at least ten years ago and foreign manufacturers, accustomed to resisting government regulations, did very little to prepare for E-Day. Then, about 6 years ago, Dr. Merkel flew to Beijing and begged, unsuccessfully, for an extension.
EVs gonna save lotsa imported hydrocarbons, too. Juicy.
The Chinese government started consumer subsidies around 2010, there was a Merkel visit there in 2008, so maybe around this time. If Japan had not destroyed the MITI centred managed capitalism in the 1990s, and allowed the Central Bank to become predominant, perhaps they could have made the same turn. But thats what the US demanded, and the Toyoda dynasty still rules Toyota through its incompetent progeny, as does the Quandt family with respect to BMW. As an aside, the Quandt's fortune was built under Nazism with extensive use of slave labour, a link which much of Germany's elite still have.
Did Japan destroy MITI or was it killed off at the request of the US? Washington has always hated sub-national bodies that serve their citizens well but frustrate US capitalists.
From the "Princes of the Yen" documentary looks like both the Japanese Central Bank monetary orthodoxies in combination with the US that wanted to destroy Japan's challenge to US technological supremacy. The US also used 100% tariffs on memory chips and "gentleman's agreements" on imports together with a massive revaluation of the Yen to take out the Japanese challenge. The Chinese kept the control of the financial system within Party control and are not occupied by 10,000s of US troops, so the US could not do the same to China.