China’s plan to sell cheap EVs to the rest of the world
中国向世界出售廉价电动汽车的计划

The resurrection of a car plant in Brazil’s poor north-east stands as a symbol of China’s global advance — and the west’s retreat.
巴西贫困的东北部汽车工厂的复苏象征着中国的全球进军，以及西方的撤退。

BYD, the Shenzhen-based conglomerate, has taken over an old Ford factory in Camaçari, which was abandoned by the American automaker nearly a century after Henry Ford first set up operations in Brazil.
比亚迪，总部位于深圳的企业集团，已接管了位于卡马萨里的一家老福特工厂，这家工厂在亨利·福特首次在巴西设立业务近一个世纪后被这家美国汽车制造商遗弃。

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, visited China last year, he met BYD’s billionaire founder and chair Wang Chuanfu. After that meeting, BYD picked the country for its first carmaking hub outside of Asia.
当巴西总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦去年访问中国时，他会见了比亚迪的亿万富翁创始人兼董事长王传福。在那次会议之后，比亚迪选择了这个国家作为其亚洲以外的第一个汽车制造中心。

Under a $1bn-plus investment plan, BYD intends to start producing electric and hybrid automobiles this year at the site in Bahia state, which will also manufacture bus and truck chassis and process battery materials.
根据一项 10 亿美元以上的投资计划，比亚迪打算在巴伊亚州的工厂开始生产电动和混合动力汽车，该工厂还将生产公交车和卡车底盘，并加工电池材料。

The new Brazil plant is no outlier — it falls into a wave of corporate Chinese investment in electric vehicle manufacturing supply chains in the world’s most important developing economies.
新的巴西工厂并非孤例，它融入了中国企业在全球最重要的发展中经济体中对电动汽车制造供应链的投资浪潮。

The inadvertent result of rising protectionism in the US and Europe could be to drive many emerging markets into China’s hands.
美国和欧洲不断抬高的保护主义可能会导致许多新兴市场落入中国手中。

Last month, Joe Biden issued a new broadside against Beijing’s deep financial support of Chinese industry as he unveiled sweeping new tariffs on a range of cleantech products — most notably, a 100 per cent tariff on electric vehicles. “It’s not competition. It’s cheating. And we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said.
上个月，乔·拜登对北京对中国工业的深度金融支持发起了新的猛烈攻击，同时公布了一系列清洁技术产品的新关税，其中最引人注目的是对电动汽车征收 100%的关税。“这不是竞争，这是作弊。我们在美国已经看到了损害，”拜登说道。

The measures were partly aimed at boosting Biden’s chances in his presidential battle with Donald Trump. But the tariffs, paired with rising restrictions on Chinese investment on American soil, will have immense impact on the global auto market, in effect shutting China’s world-leading EV makers out of the world’s biggest economy.
这些措施在一定程度上旨在提高拜登在与唐纳德·特朗普的总统竞选中的机会。但是，关税与对中国在美国土地上投资的限制日益加剧，将对全球汽车市场产生巨大影响，实际上将使中国世界领先的电动汽车制造商被排除在全球最大经济体之外。

The EU’s own anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese electric cars is expected to conclude next week as Brussels tries to protect European carmakers by stemming the flow of low-cost Chinese electric vehicles into the bloc.
欧盟对中国电动汽车的反补贴调查预计将于下周结束，布鲁塞尔试图通过阻止低成本中国电动汽车进入欧盟市场来保护欧洲汽车制造商。

Government officials, executives and experts say that the series of new cleantech tariffs issued by Washington and Brussels is forcing China’s leading players to sharpen their focus on markets in the rest of the world.
政府官员、高管和专家表示，华盛顿和布鲁塞尔发布的一系列新清洁技术关税正在迫使中国领先企业将市场重心转向世界其他地区。

This, they argue, will lead to Chinese dominance across the world’s most important emerging markets, including south-east Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and the remaining western economies that are less protectionist than the US and Europe.
他们认为，这将导致中国在全球最重要的新兴市场，包括东南亚、拉丁美洲和中东，以及比美国和欧洲更少保护主义的西方经济体中占据主导地位。

“That is the part that seems to be lost in this whole discussion of ‘can we raise some tariffs and slow down the Chinese advance’? That’s only defending your homeland. That’s leaving everything else open,” says Bill Russo, the former head of Chrysler in Asia and founder of Automobility, a Shanghai consultancy.
“这似乎是在整个‘我们能否提高关税、减缓中国的进展’的讨论中被忽略的部分？那只是在保卫你的家园。那样会让其他一切都暴露在外面，”曾任克莱斯勒亚洲区负责人、上海咨询公司 Automobility 创始人比尔·罗素说。

“Those markets are in play and China is aggressively going after those markets.”
“这些市场正在发展，中国正在积极开拓这些市场。”

The new Chinese investments are often two-pronged — both in car manufacturing and the raw materials that are central to the new economy.
中国的新投资往往是双管齐下的——既涉及汽车制造，又涉及对新经济核心原材料的投资。

Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the west needs to understand that China’s global ambitions create an opportunity for many countries to expand their manufacturing base and to obtain foreign direct investment in “technologies of the future”.
Ilaria Mazzocco，战略与国际研究中心的高级研究员表示，西方需要明白中国的全球野心为许多国家提供了扩大制造基地和获取“未来技术”外国直接投资的机会。

China’s cleantech investments in the developing world, she says, “really complicates” foreign policy for western governments, which have already tried to warn about the risk of becoming dependent on Beijing through President Xi Jinping’s so-called Belt and Road infrastructure programme.
中国在发展中国家的清洁技术投资“确实让”西方政府的外交政策变得更加复杂，这些政府已经试图通过习近平主席的所谓“一带一路”基础设施项目警告有关依赖北京的风险。

“It is tough to tell a country in the developing world, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t want to have more factories or refining because it’s Chinese investment’,” she says. “With the [Belt and Road Initiative] there was a credible argument that a lot of debt is not going to be sustainable . . . but here if they open factories, they hire local people, then in the minds of the leaders of these countries, ‘why not?’.”
“很难告诉发展中国家，‘嘿，你不应该想要拥有更多工厂或精炼厂，因为这是中国的投资’，”她说。“在‘一带一路’倡议中，有一个可信的论点，即很多债务是不可持续的……但是如果他们开设工厂，雇用当地人，那么在这些国家领导人的心目中，‘为什么不呢？’。”

The International Energy Agency forecasts that this year 10.1mn EVs will be sold in China, 3.4mn in Europe, 1.7mn in the US. Fewer than 1.5mn EVs will be sold everywhere else in the world.
国际能源署预测，今年中国将销售 1001 万辆电动汽车，欧洲 340 万辆，美国 170 万辆。全球其他地区销售的电动汽车不到 150 万辆。

Yet the agency has forecast that the global EV fleet will grow eight-fold to about 240mn in 2030. This implies annual global EV sales of 20mn cars in 2025 and 40mn in 2030, or 30 per cent of all car sales. Moreover, an increasingly large share of that expansion is likely to come from new markets.
然而，该机构预测，到 2030 年，全球电动汽车车队将增长八倍，达到约 2.4 亿辆。这意味着到 2025 年全球电动汽车销量将达到 2000 万辆，到 2030 年将达到 4000 万辆，占所有汽车销量的 30%。此外，这种扩张中越来越大的份额可能来自新兴市场。

In some important developing economies, Chinese companies are investing in both production and processing raw materials. Nowhere is this more striking than China’s involvement in the EV ecosystem in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest reserves of nickel, a key component of EV batteries.
在一些重要的发展中经济体中，中国企业正在投资于生产和加工原材料。中国参与印度尼西亚的电动汽车生态系统尤为引人注目，印度尼西亚拥有世界上最大的镍储备，镍是电动汽车电池的关键组成部分。

Last year alone companies domiciled in China and Hong Kong invested $13.9bn in Indonesia, most of which is believed to have been in the metals and mining industry. Chinese companies account for more than 90 per cent of the nickel smelters in the country.
仅去年，总部设在中国和香港的公司在印度尼西亚投资了 139 亿美元，其中大部分据信是在金属和矿业行业。中国公司占该国镍冶炼厂的 90%以上。

Chinese banks have also been keen to provide financing for nickel plants when others have been hesitant, says Alexander Barus, chief executive of the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park — the country’s largest nickel processing site, which was built by Tsingshan, a Chinese nickel producer, and a local partner. 
中国银行在其他人犹豫不决时也热衷为镍厂提供融资，印尼莫罗瓦利工业园区首席执行官亚历山大·巴鲁斯表示。该园区是印尼最大的镍加工基地，由中国镍生产商青山和当地合作伙伴建造。

“When we first started searching for mining investment, we went around the banks in Indonesia, no one supported us. The banks were in doubt, whether it would be profitable or not. But when we went to Chinese banks, they were ready to finance,” says Barus. 
“当我们最初开始寻找矿业投资时，我们走访了印度尼西亚的各家银行，没有一家支持我们。银行们对此持怀疑态度，不确定是否会盈利。但当我们去中国的银行时，他们愿意提供融资，”Barus 说。

Having secured access to Indonesia’s key resources, Chinese companies have also been the first movers in setting up EV manufacturing plants, even as Indonesia — and President Joko Widodo personally — have courted other big names such as Tesla to set up EV manufacturing. BYD said early this year that it would invest $1.3bn in an EV factory in Indonesia.
在获得印度尼西亚关键资源的准入后，中国公司也成为首批设立电动汽车制造工厂的公司，尽管印度尼西亚和总统佐科·维多多亲自邀请特斯拉等其他大公司设立电动汽车制造厂。比亚迪表示，今年初将在印度尼西亚投资 13 亿美元建设电动汽车工厂。

The story is similar in Brazil where BYD and compatriot group Great Wall Motor are about to commence local manufacturing that could also serve for exports to the wider region. 
在巴西，比亚迪和同胞集团长城汽车即将开始本地制造，这也可以用于出口到更广泛的地区。

Great Wall is investing about $1.9bn in Latin America’s largest economy with production expected to start this year at a former Mercedes-Benz factory in Iracemápolis, São Paulo state.
长城汽车正在拉丁美洲最大经济体投资约 19 亿美元，预计生产将于今年在圣保罗州伊拉塞马波利斯的一家前梅赛德斯-奔驰工厂开始。

As well as its investment in auto production at Camaçari, BYD is also on the lookout for lithium mining assets in Brazil, which is ramping up extraction of the key metal for EV batteries. 
除了在 Camaçari 进行汽车生产的投资外，比亚迪还在巴西寻找锂矿资产，巴西正在加大对电动汽车电池关键金属的开采。

Brazil, which is the world’s sixth-biggest car market, has been relatively slow to embrace electrification. This is attributed in part to its widespread use of lower-carbon ethanol derived from sugarcane. But there are already signs of a shift. Last year sales of EVs almost doubled in Brazil and in recent months the country overtook Belgium to become the largest single export destination for Chinese EVs.
巴西是世界第六大汽车市场，相对较慢地接受电动化。部分原因是由于巴西广泛使用来源于甘蔗的低碳乙醇。但已经出现转变的迹象。去年，巴西的电动汽车销量几乎翻了一番，最近几个月，该国超过比利时，成为中国电动汽车最大的单一出口目的地。

In an effort to stimulate a homegrown industry, Brasília is imposing rising tariffs on EV and hybrid imports — these will hit 35 per cent by mid-2026. Lula, himself a former metal worker, has promulgated a vision of a “green” industrial rejuvenation.
为了刺激本土产业发展，巴西利亚正在对电动汽车和混合动力汽车进口征收逐渐增加的关税 —— 到 2026 年中期将达到 35%。卢拉本人曾是一名金属工人，他提出了一个“绿色”工业复兴的愿景。

China’s publicity drive in the region includes BYD’s sponsorship of the Copa América football tournament for South American nations. Such marketing campaigns, coupled with aggressive pricing by Chinese car brands, has led to acceptance by Brazilian consumers, says Cassio Pagliarini, chief marketing officer at Bright Consulting, an automotive sector specialist. 
中国在该地区的宣传活动包括比亚迪赞助南美国家的美洲杯足球锦标赛。Bright Consulting 的首席营销官卡西奥·帕利亚里尼表示，中国汽车品牌的激进定价以及这类营销活动已经导致巴西消费者接受。

In China, the expanding global push by EV makers is seen as part of the broader strategy under Xi of boosting political and economic ties with developing countries via his flagship Belt and Road Initiative.
在中国，电动汽车制造商不断扩大全球推动力被视为习近平更广泛战略的一部分，该战略旨在通过他的旗舰“一带一路”倡议加强与发展中国家的政治和经济联系。

Over recent years the value of China’s exports to emerging markets has overtaken that with developed economies, a historic change after decades of Chinese growth being more dependent on G7 economies.
近年来，中国对新兴市场的出口价值已经超过了对发达经济体的出口价值，在几十年来更多依赖 G7 经济体增长的历史性变化之后。

“From the perspective of national strategy, there is no doubt that the focus of China’s future foreign economic strategy will shift towards developing countries,” Tu Xinquan, a professor and dean of China Institute for WTO Studies, at the University of International Business and Economics, told local media the day after Biden imposed new tariffs on Chinese EVs.
“从国家战略的角度来看，毫无疑问，中国未来的外贸经济战略重心将转向发展中国家，”中国国际贸易经济学院 WTO 研究所所长、教授屠新泉在拜登对中国电动汽车征收新关税后告诉当地媒体。

Yet the expansion of China’s auto industry into these new markets is threatening to eat into the strong market share held by several multinational automakers.
然而，中国汽车行业向这些新市场的扩张正威胁着一些跨国汽车制造商所占据的强势市场份额。

This is particularly worrying for Japanese companies which have built up a strong position in the south-east Asian market. “China can make a very compelling sales pitch to south-east Asian countries,” says a senior Japanese government official, highlighting Beijing’s ability to sell not just electric vehicles but also critical raw materials for batteries. “That’s the biggest risk for Japan.”
这对在东南亚市场建立了强势地位的日本公司尤其令人担忧。“中国可以向东南亚国家提出非常具有说服力的销售主张，”一位日本高级政府官员表示，强调北京不仅能够销售电动汽车，还能销售电池关键原材料。“这是日本面临的最大风险。”

Another senior executive working with a Japanese carmaker was more direct: “We’re terrified that Chinese cars will flood into south-east Asian markets.”
另一位与日本汽车制造商合作的高级主管更直接地表示：“我们担心中国汽车会涌入东南亚市场。”

Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, says China’s push to promote high-tech manufacturing has put its companies into direct competition with their European counterparts in many sectors in markets across the world, including autos. 
欧盟驻中国商会会长詹斯·埃斯克伦德表示，中国推动高科技制造业发展，使其公司在全球市场的许多领域与欧洲同行直接竞争，包括汽车。

European businesses should not be “complacent about the situation”, he adds.
欧洲企业不应该对这种情况感到“自满”，他补充道。

For some countries, the arrival of China’s EV industry is creating new tensions with a US administration, which does not want to cede influence to Beijing.
对于一些国家来说，中国电动汽车行业的到来正在与美国政府产生新的紧张关系，后者不愿将影响力让给北京。

Over the past year, US officials have repeatedly warned that the Biden administration will take action if China tries to ease its industrial overcapacity problem by dumping goods on international markets.
在过去的一年里，美国官员多次警告称，如果中国试图通过向国际市场倾销商品来缓解其工业产能过剩问题，拜登政府将采取行动。

One particular point of concern in Washington is Mexico, which has access to the US market through the USMCA, the trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico. Chinese companies, including BYD, have said they want to build factories in the country and several other rivals including MG and Chery have been talking to Mexican officials for more than a year.
华盛顿特别关注的一个问题是墨西哥，通过美墨加拿大协定（USMCA），墨西哥可以进入美国市场。包括比亚迪在内的中国公司表示他们希望在该国建厂，而包括 MG 和奇瑞在内的其他几家竞争对手已经与墨西哥官员进行了一年多的接触。

Mexico’s government has been careful to not be seen to be courting China and has made clear in public statements its priority is the US relationship, including signing a memorandum of intent to start screening investments over the risk they pose to national security.
墨西哥政府一直小心翼翼，不希望被视为在迎合中国，并在公开声明中明确表示其重点是与美国的关系，包括签署了一份意向备忘录，开始筛选投资项目，以评估其对国家安全的风险。

Leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has nationalised the country’s lithium supplies and cancelled a concession held by Chinese firm Ganfeng for an operating mine in the country’s north.
墨西哥左翼总统安德烈斯·曼努埃尔·洛佩斯·奥夫拉多尔已将该国的锂供应国有化，并取消了中国企业赣丰在该国北部一座矿山的经营特许权。

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president-elect after a landslide victory on Sunday, leaned heavily on Chinese companies for transportation projects when she was mayor of Mexico City, buying electric buses and contracting out the renovation of the city’s oldest subway line to Chinese firms.
克劳迪娅·谢因鲍姆在周日的压倒性胜利后当选为墨西哥总统，担任墨西哥城市长时，她大量依赖中国公司进行交通项目，购买电动公交车，并将城市最古老的地铁线翻新工程外包给中国公司。

Yet Sheinbaum, a leftwing former climate scientist, insisted during the election campaign that USMCA would remain “fundamental”.
然而，左翼前气候科学家 Sheinbaum 在竞选期间坚称美墨加协定将保持“基础”。

Mexican consumers, however, are rapidly embracing cars from China. Last year, one in five cars sold was made in China, although half of those were produced by non-Chinese brands.
墨西哥消费者迅速接受来自中国的汽车。去年，每五辆汽车中就有一辆是中国制造的，尽管其中一半是非中国品牌生产的。

Guillermo Rosales, head of Mexican auto distributors association AMDA, says imports from China have led to a clogging of ports in the country’s Pacific coast such as Lázaro Cárdenas.
墨西哥汽车经销商协会 AMDA 负责人吉列尔莫·罗萨莱斯表示，来自中国的进口导致了该国太平洋沿岸港口（如拉萨罗·卡尔德纳斯）的拥堵。

“With the arrival of Chinese cars, [consumers] have a greater supply and more options to choose from,” he says, adding that US concerns did not worry Mexican consumers. “It’s a very open market for competition.”
“随着中国汽车的到来，[消费者] 有更多的供应和更多的选择，”他说，并补充说美国的担忧并不担忧墨西哥消费者。“这是一个非常开放的竞争市场。”

Ambitions of China’s BYD stretch beyond EVs
中国比亚迪的雄心不仅仅局限于电动汽车

The global plans of the company founded by Wang Chuanfu range from solar modules and electric buses, trucks and trains to complex transport systems. But is it trying to do too much? Full story from April
公司创始人王传福的全球计划涵盖太阳能模块、电动公交车、卡车和火车以及复杂的交通系统。但它是否试图做得太多？4 月的完整报道。

In Australia, China’s global expansion is also leading to new questions about national security as new high-tech cars collect information from drivers and their surroundings.
在澳大利亚，中国的全球扩张也引发了关于国家安全的新问题，因为新型高科技汽车收集驾驶员及其周围环境的信息。

A sharp increase in the number of Chinese-branded EVs on its roads — BYD’s sales were up sixfold last year — has sparked complaints over data and infrastructure security.
中国品牌电动汽车数量急剧增加，比亚迪去年销量增长了六倍，引发了关于数据和基础设施安全的投诉。

Australia was the first country to ban the use of Chinese telecoms vendors in its 5G networks in 2018 setting off a period of tension with China. The move to ban Huawei and ZTE was supported by Australia’s security services, which said that the use of “high-risk” vendors in the telecoms networks could have had implications for the security of data and infrastructure in the country including transportation.
澳大利亚是 2018 年第一个禁止在其 5G 网络中使用中国电信供应商的国家，这引发了与中国的紧张时期。禁止华为和中兴的举措得到了澳大利亚安全机构的支持，他们表示，在电信网络中使用“高风险”供应商可能会对该国的数据和基础设施安全产生影响，包括交通运输。

Opposition senator James Paterson has argued that the potential risk posed by Chinese EVs went beyond the person buying and driving the car but to the community they live in given the amount of data that a vehicle can collect. “We’ve all seen the movies where electric cars can be weaponised,” he says.
反对党参议员詹姆斯·帕特森认为，中国电动汽车可能带来的风险不仅仅局限于购买和驾驶汽车的个人，还涉及到他们所居住的社区，因为电动汽车可以收集大量数据。他说：“我们都看过电影，电动汽车可以被武器化。”

Paterson wants the Australian government to instigate a national security review of Chinese EVs. “We didn’t allow those companies to become the backbone of our communications network. Why would we let them become the backbone of our transport network?”
帕特森希望澳大利亚政府启动对中国电动汽车进行国家安全审查。“我们不允许这些公司成为我们通信网络的支柱。为什么我们要让它们成为我们交通网络的支柱呢？”

Additional reporting by Nic Fildes in Sydney, Kana Inagaki and David Keohane in Tokyo, Ding Wenjie and Joe Leahy in Beijing
悉尼的尼克·菲尔德斯、东京的稻垣加奈和大卫·基奥哈恩、北京的丁文杰和乔·利希的额外报道