The achievement and traceability of this achievement are closely related to the industrial policies formulated and implemented by the state at different times. Over the past 40 years, through policy guidance and independent innovation, China has become an active advocate and leader of the development direction of automotive electrification, intellectualization and sharing worldwide.

From scratch to the introduction of foreign capital, China's automobile industry is developing in exploration

In the early days of the founding of New China, the automobile industry, which had a lot of waste to be done and a lot to be done, bears the deep expectations of the Party, the state and hundreds of millions of people. In order to develop the national economy, the state decided to set up its own automobile factory. In the 1950s and 1960s, FAW, FAW II and SAIC's "three big" plants were built and put into operation.

On May 5, 1958, the Dongfeng CA71 car was successfully manufactured in FAW and sent to Beijing to present to the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China. When the car drove into the Zhongnanhai Sea, Chairman Mao said excitedly, "OK, take our own car!"

After more than 20 years of "self-reliance" development, although China has built an independent automobile industry manufacturing system, it is free from the world automobile industry development trend. In the years after the establishment of the Three National Congresses, automobile and auto parts projects have been launched all over the country. In fact, since the 1950s, China's automobile industry has been resonating with the construction of new China's economy at the same frequency and beating vigorously with the pulse of the times.

In 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC made a major decision to implement reform and opening up. With the gradual increase of foreign exchanges and the formal introduction of foreign-funded enterprises, China's automotive industry has entered a fast track of development. In 1983, Beijing Jeep, China's first joint venture, was established. Subsequently, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tianjin introduced Japanese technology to set up Xiali Automobile, Guangzhou introduced French Peugeot Automobile to set up Guangzhou Peugeot Automobile Factory, and Shanghai introduced German Volkswagen to set up Shanghai Volkswagen Automobile Factory. With Beijing Jeep, Tianjin Xiali and Guangzhou Peugeot as the new "three small" trend, joint venture brands surged. The Chinese firmly believe that technology can be exchanged from the market, while foreigners believe that China is the last profitable automobile market in the world.

However, with Volkswagen's successive alliance with SAIC and FAW, it has nearly monopolized the production and sales of China's car industry, which has attracted the attention of the industry authorities. In 1994, the national automobile industry policy was promulgated, and a series of regulations were made for the development of joint venture enterprises, such as "up to two partners, the proportion of Chinese shares must not be less than 50%, requiring local technology development of joint ventures".

Joint venture and self-determination are indispensable topics in China's automotive industry. Until the 1990s, the development of China's local automobile enterprises was basically accompanied by joint ventures. There are voices in the industry concerned that joint ventures are like "opium" in the automotive industry. Over time, they will become addicted and suffer from dependence on joint ventures, which will affect the development of their own brands.

In fact, such concerns are justified. According to Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the National Passenger Vehicle Market Information Association, Xiali insisted on self-determination and jointly developed Tianjin Toyota with Toyota in an innovative joint venture mode, which embodied the good development idea of joint venture supporting self-determination. "But the enterprise has no status, only the administrative unit of the group has status. Therefore, the joint venture mode between the production enterprise and the international company has gradually become the joint venture mode of the group company. The enterprise has lost the space for independent development and has become the subordinate unit of the automobile group."

"Market for technology" is the original intention of China's automobile industry policy to open to the outside world. But the effect is not very ideal. The core technology of joint venture products is still firmly in the hands of foreign-funded enterprises. How to look at the relationship between joint venture cooperation and self-owned brand, and how to make good use of joint venture cooperation to develop self-owned brand, has become a universal topic faced by Chinese automobile enterprises. As Leng Changchun, senior manager of FAW Import and Export Co., Ltd., said, "China's automotive manufacturing industry system is strong, but it still needs to be more fully competitive baptism."

The Only Way for the Rise of Independent Brand from Great to Strong

Since entering the new century, China's automobile industry has entered a period of rapid development. However, in the view of some industry insiders, the essence of China's "big automobile country" is only the "largest market in the world" of foreign automobile brands. Independent brands are in a difficult position in the local market, and their living space is being squeezed smaller and smaller.

He Guangyuan, former Minister of machinery industry, was deeply impressed by this. "In a joint venture, our enterprises have little say in product issues. Any small thing that needs to be changed must be certified abroad. It will take a long time. This is not our goal to strive for." He Guangyuan believes that the goal and direction of China's future development of automobiles should be to achieve self-improvement through cooperation and to really develop China's own brands.

For China's automobile industry, how to expand the development space of its own brand under the strength of joint venture automobile enterprises and how to make China move from a "big automobile country" to a "strong automobile country" has become the direction of the government and generations of Chinese automobiles.

From 2004 to 2009, a series of automobile industry policies were promulgated one after another, which eventually led to the publication of the "Auto Industry Adjustment and Revitalization Plan". The plan proposes that "through mergers and reorganizations, two to three large automobile enterprise groups with a production and marketing scale of more than 20 million vehicles will be formed, and the number of automobile enterprise groups whose production and marketing scale accounts for more than 90% of the market share will be reduced from 14 to less than 10."

With the continuous optimization of the policy, China Automobile adheres to the "big group" development strategy more firmly, and supports its own brand as before. Fortunately, after 2016, with the rapid development of China's economy and the continuous improvement of residents'purchasing power, self-owned brand automobiles ushered in rapid development. On October 20, 2016, the Link brand was born in Berlin, which is Geely's first high-end brand facing the world. Coincidentally, Great Wall Automobile has also stepped out of a similar development path with Link. In 2016, its high-end SUV brand Weipai-WEY was released, pointing to Japanese and Korean brands such as Hyundai, Toyota and Honda.

At the same time, a large number of independent brands, such as Chang'an, SAIC, Chery, Jianghuai, Beiqi, Zhongtai and BYD, have all established factories or R&D centers overseas. By 2016, the number of Chery's overseas factories had reached 17, with a capacity of 210,000 vehicles; in February 2017, Jianghuai Automobile set up factories in Mexico; and in June 2017, SAIC announced the establishment of a wholly owned subsidiary in India to introduce the famous brand into India.

According to the statistics of China Automobile Industry Association, the market share of China's brand passenger cars was stable from 2011 to 2018, accounting for 42.3%, 41.9%, 40.3%, 38.4%, 41.3%, 43.2%, 43.9% and 42.1%, respectively. In response, Dong Yang, the executive vice president of China Automobile Industry Association, said that thanks to the reform and opening-up policy and the trend of economic globalization, the automotive industry promoted reform through opening up, withstood the pressure of independent innovation, and the industry continued to grow. "More foreign brands enter the Chinese market, the gradual abolition of the foreign share ratio and the fiercer market competition will stimulate the rise and development of domestic brands and force the industry to accelerate the transformation and upgrading."

In terms of enterprise size, the reporter of Securities Daily noticed that many enterprises in today's Chinese automobile industry have ranked among the top 500 in the world. In 2004, SAIC became the first Chinese automobile company to enter the top 500 in the world; by 2016, SAIC, Dongfeng, FAW, Chang'an, Beiqi, Guangzhou Automobile, Geely and other seven enterprises have entered the top 500 in the world successively, and Chinese automobile enterprises are becoming a force that can not be ignored.

New Energy "Bend Overtaking" Participates in and Leads New Industry Reform

With the increasing challenges of global energy shortage, environmental pollution and driving safety, the global automotive industry is moving towards the direction of electrification, intellectualization, networking and sharing. Under the general trend of global energy saving and emission reduction, the development of new energy has risen to the national strategy of our country. The government has focused on supporting new energy vehicles as a strategic emerging industry. China's new energy automobile industry has grown from scratch to the first in the world in terms of production and sales, showing an explosive growth. The technological level of enterprises has been significantly improved. A large number of new automobile manufacturing forces have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain, and social recognition has been expanding.

Among them, Weilai Automobile adopts the strategy of high-rise and high-level competition, starts from high-end to cooperate with innovative business model to establish new brands, launches the first mass-produced ES8 positioning high-performance intelligent electric 7-seat SUV, directly to the Standard Tesla Model X; as a purpose to create a national intelligent electric vehicle affordable to ordinary consumers, Weima Automobile. The first mass-produced vehicle EX5 is positioned as a popular, efficient and intelligent electric SUV, while Xiaopeng Automobile has a new path, focusing on the perfect integration of intelligent hardware, software design and vehicle model, to create a highly intelligent and evolutionary AI car for young users.

Thanks to the continuous improvement of China's spare parts manufacturing level, almost every new domestic automobile manufacturing force is adhering to the forward research and development of automobile manufacturing path, and Chinese-made spare parts have been able to compete with foreign high-end enterprises. From batteries, motors, to the field of electronic control, most of the independent brands have mastered the core ability of independent research and development, fully capable of meeting the current market and consumer demand for vehicles.

At the same time, new technologies such as vehicle networking, automatic driving, industrial digitalization, human-computer interaction interface optimization are becoming the necessary choice in the minds of consumers. Independent brand car companies actively cooperate with leading Internet companies to jointly promote high-end models of their own brands, including Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.

In addition, with the upgrading demand of users for new consumption and the change of mass travel efficiency with automobile as the carrier, a new mode of sharing has emerged in the field of automobile travel with the help of platform economy and shared travel. Consumers have changed from purchasing cars to purchasing travel services. The continuous hard work and efforts of millions of automobiles are driving China's automotive industry to achieve new breakthroughs in the direction of electrification, intellectualization, networking, lightweight, sharing and internationalization.

Zhang Shulin, former executive vice-chairman and secretary-general of China Automobile Industry Association, said that after decades of storms and hardships, China's automobile industry has finally burst out vigorous and vigorous forces driven by policy relays, from a closed and semi-closed stage of development to a new era of comprehensive open development. In the new development opportunities and challenges, China's automobile industry will enter a new era in which both competitive development and structural adjustment are equally important, power transformation is completed, and the automobile production power will be transformed into a powerful country.

Over the years, China's automobile industry has merged in the open, risen in the integration, competed in the rise, and matured in the competition. After years of accumulation, China's automobile industry, after staggering through decades of storms and hardships, finally stands at the forefront of the industry with a mature attitude, and takes part in and guides the coming of the next industrial change.