“IN CHINA, FOR CHINA, TO THE WORLD”
Take Nissan for example. In a joint venture with Chinese automaker Dongfeng, Nissan is producing vehicles such as the N7 electric sedan in China, and plans to sell them in regions including Southeast Asia.
In a strategy it describes as “in China, for China, to the world”, Nissan has gone from treating the country merely as a sales market to building, sourcing and designing EVs there, and exporting some of them abroad.
The Japanese carmaker is changing course because its previous approach in China, a market moving faster and cutting prices more aggressively than expected, proved too slow and detached. In 2024, Nissan sold fewer than 700,000 vehicles in China – less than half its volume four years earlier. This prompted a downgrade to its global sales forecast.
On the whole, Japanese automakers have ceded ground to Chinese rivals that launched cheaper and technically advanced models such as BYD’s Seagull and Dolphin. According to industry data, Japanese automakers’ share of China’s car market has fallen to 13 per cent from a peak of 24 per cent in 2020.
Competing in EVs now depends less on technological differentiation alone and more on cost control and supply chain integration. On those measures, Chinese carmakers have set the pace at home, and are increasingly exporting that model abroad, with BYD, Chery and SAIC all expanding aggressively into Europe.
