Chinese cars
- Thread starter SkyTerran
- Start date
You have no idea what you're talking about. Yes there is corruption in EU, but it's about the same level as UK.
The EU is happy with China flooding it's market with low tech products and products assembled in China, but designed in EU or US and with key parts made in Taiwan, SK and Japan. They are not happy with Chinese companies taking over big high tech markets, with products where all the technology, design, parts manufacturing and services are done in China.
It used to be that EU exported to China high tech stuff, sold with big profit margins. While China was selling to EU low tech, low profit products. That worked great for EU. But with the recent China advances in 5G, solar power, batteries and EVs this system is getting disrupted. EU (same as US) is trying to stop China from taking over key high tech and high profit industries using import fees, sanctions (Huawei) and denying advanced technology access (blocking ASML from selling modern lithography machines to Chinese companies).
We'll see if it works in the long term. Most young people in China spend a lot more time studying than the kids in the West and dream of becoming engineers and scientists - not influencers.
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A couple of years ago I went to a conference on EU innovation programs. A lot of high profile speakers - the European Commissioner for Innovation, prime ministers, top EU bureaucrats dealing with technology. Essentially most of the people who manage the EU innovation investments. The impression I got was they have no clue about technology. They don't fund companies doing real innovation because those don't have some sort of certificate (and EU issues just a few of those a year and they go to well connected people, and not real innovators). A lot of the money goes to companies that are advocating pseudo science. Also the fact that essentially every EU country gets a commissioner and the gave the Commission for Innovation to the poorest country in EU - Bulgaria speaks of how high among EU priorities innovation is.
On the other hand in China the government technology investment money are mostly managed by engineers with real world experience. When the central party committee says "we're going to develop EVs" everyone chips in - local authorities give free land to EV companies to build factories, existing car companies cooperate with EV makers to help them build factories or give them access to existing car factories, private investors and state banks flood the EV startups with money. Nothing like this happens in EU.
On the other hand in China the government technology investment money are mostly managed by engineers with real world experience. When the central party committee says "we're going to develop EVs" everyone chips in - local authorities give free land to EV companies to build factories, existing car companies cooperate with EV makers to help them build factories or give them access to existing car factories, private investors and state banks flood the EV startups with money. Nothing like this happens in EU.
IMHO the British and German car manufacturers need to accept that long term they will loose 90% of the sales they currently make in China. The Chinese market is adopting EVs very quickly and no Western company, except Tesla, can compete with Chinese EVs. Furthermore as AI/self driving technologies become more widely spread, IMHO the Chinese government will make an effort to remove any cars running foreign made software/models from their roads. They already clean the streets of Teslas before Xi's visits.