GONG HAIDA works as a private driver in Beijing.
He owns a Fukan, made by a joint venture between Francis Puzhou, Cetron, and Chinese manufacturer
Dengfeng.
He believes cars manufactured by joint ventures are better than solely domestic brands.
Global automakers are investing billions in the Chinese market, which grew 14% to 21.9
million vehicles last year.
But they have to play by Chinese rules.
Foreign companies must enter joint ventures with local companies to assemble cars here.
This means sharing profits, decision-making, and most controversially, proprietary technology.
Large state-owned automakers want that joint venture requirement to be kept in place indefinitely
so that they can share in the profits, but smaller Chinese automakers who do not have
joint venture partners claim the requirements are anti-competitive and unnecessary.
Ford trialed rival General Motors, which started building cars in China in 1998, and started
even further behind entrenched European brands like Volkswagen and PSA Cetron, which started
in the 1980s, while Ford missed some of the initial boom and is catching up fast.
Here in Chongqing, humans and robots interact in a dance that allows steel to arrive in
the morning and be headed out to dealerships eight hours later.
When a Chinese consumer buys a Ford, to us it's very clear that they see that they are
buying an international, highly desirable branded vehicle.
Does it give them face?
Does it set them apart in their community?
But in addition to that, is a good value for money.
And the Chinese consumer has absolutely bought into that which has fueled their growth.
Sales at Chong on Ford rose 71% in 2013.
To help turn the American symbol into a Chinese household name, the company has been on a marketing
marathon sponsoring television shows like Chinese Idol.
This perception of better quality in more attractive style has attracted younger drivers
to foreign brands.
The Chinese government is considering whether or not to drop the joint venture requirement,
even though the multinationals have not asked for this.
Beijing officials worry that keeping a protectionist rule in place now will be used as justification
someday for other countries to impose restrictions if China starts exporting large numbers of
cars to industrialized countries.
The joint venture in Chongqing now produces more Fords than any other place except southeast
Michigan.
But a question remains, has China stunted the development of its own automakers by guaranteeing
them easy profits from joint ventures in which they are a little more than contract manufacturers?
And will China now remove the joint venture rule and require its biggest automakers to
compete on their own, instead of simply following computerized blueprints from places like Wolfsburg,
Germany, Yokohama, Japan, or Detroit?
And more importantly, how long can the boom last?
Looking for the New York Times in China, this is Jonah Kessler.
