[HN Gopher] BYD Sells 4.6M Vehicles in 2025, Meets Revised Sales...
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BYD Sells 4.6M Vehicles in 2025, Meets Revised Sales Goal
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 121 points
Date : 2026-01-01 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://archive.today/pFuU6
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Selling that many cars _despite_ intense competition at home and
| trade barriers abroad seems the more natural way to express that
| story.
|
| They instead focused on how in evil communist China you need to
| continue to make better cars than rivals in order for your
| business to succeed and grow.
|
| What a strange system they have over there. If only they were
| capitalist like the US and being an incumbent connected to the
| regime was all you needed to keep extracting money from the
| population despite product stagnation.
| djohnston wrote:
| Two things can be true at once:
|
| 1. BYD has rapidly surpassed many western companies in terms of
| product quality / desirability
|
| 2. Chinese automotive industry is a strategic threat to Western
| military capabilities. If they are successful in usurping
| European / American auto manufacturers, it will be a death blow
| to an already hollowed-out industrial base that is critical to
| any sustained military engagement.
|
| So, yes, western companies have stagnated, and yes, the West
| needs to keep these dinosaurs around through subsidies (which
| Chinese manufacturers also receieve from their regime).
| blackjack_ wrote:
| If the US had a competent government they would react by
| pulling the same playbook as China to compete. Heavily
| subsidize and incentivize production of EVs by new companies
| to replace the rotten core of existing US automakers to
| produce price competitive and quality competitive vehicles,
| then let the old guard burn down.
|
| Subsidizing the rotten core of corrupt US automakers will not
| produce a new or functional industrial base. It will simply
| maintain the illusion of an industrial base until anything of
| importance needs done. But that's basically the MO of any
| "mature" industry in the US.
| rangestransform wrote:
| What you're proposing is basically the EV subsidy, which
| got gutted because Americans got pissy about lifting a
| single finger to benefit anyone slightly more fortunate
| than themselves
| pm90 wrote:
| No it got gutted by Americans that were tragically fed a
| constant diet of misinformation as to the actual policies
| of the GOP. EVs still poll very well in the US and so
| does combating climate change.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| So the free hand of the market isn't quite as free after all
|
| If the 20th century was a repudiation of soviet communism vs
| capitalism, the 21st century seems to put capitalism on the
| backfoot
| seydor wrote:
| we keep saying these things while industry-after-industry
| gets disrupted by the chinese
|
| Next industry to be disrupted is housing, because seemingly
| the entire western world has is not even trying to provide
| housing (a necessity) to everyone.
|
| Subsidies are dangerous in the long term
| thechao wrote:
| Housing in the US is labor constrained. When I talk to GCs,
| subs, etc., they'll say that materials a bit more
| expensive, and labor is a bit more expensive; but what the
| _complain_ about -- and this can be for hours, if I get one
| going -- is the complete lack of labor in _all_ trades.
| This isn 't a new problem; the "old hands" (GCs in the 60s
| and 70s) noted the labor drop out even 30+ years ago. The
| only saving grace we had was a strong trade force incoming
| population (immigrants); but, we've cut that off.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if our industry is also labor
| constrained? I know my brother had a machine shop to make
| aftermarket titanium parts for (motor)bikes, some cars,
| etc. He had a policy of nonstop looking for new machinists,
| even if he was fully staffed, because a machinist could
| just _wander off_ at any time. With only 4 employees, he
| could find himself at at 25-50% loss of ship time in just a
| few days, at any time. It 's not even like the machinists
| were getting more money. They'd just leave, because the new
| shop was 5m closer than his.
|
| Fixing the labor pool issue is a decades long issue. More
| money in that pool won't fix things. I don't even know
| what's going on. Maybe I can just blame modern
| financialization for the issue? That seems easy, if wrong.
|
| But, for sure, the complete lack of social safety net for
| labor can't be helping. Maybe if we guaranteed child care,
| 100% round-the-year safe spaces (we could use the
| fantastically expensive schools which are empty 75% of the
| time?), 3-free-meals-per-child, and free education through
| an associates degree? None of those are particularly
| expensive, even at the national scale.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Add in giving people guaranteed healthcare so that people
| were comfortable exploring job options more.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Chinese party members reading this thread, please get into
| modular housing construction in a form that can be shipped
| to the USA and acceptable to the average person (so not
| mobile home/trailer park style stuff).
|
| If you hit us with sucking funds from the housing market
| you will gut our economy even more, and there is zero
| support in the US to protect homebuilders right now when
| the two younger generations can't afford their product. If
| you offered a bad ass modular housing system that could
| quickly/cheaply build decent homes (current US Spec grade
| or higher) that might get really interesting.
| runako wrote:
| Re #2 -- locking Chinese vehicles out of the market will also
| lead to the downfall of our industrial base over time. In
| general, Americans (including those who work in US
| manufacturing) do not understand that Chinese vehicles are
| very competitive. At some point, those vehicles are likely to
| surpass domestic capabilities (they are already there viewed
| through a price/performance lens).
|
| All of this is down to the simple fact that essentially no
| American has ever driven a Chinese vehicle and does not know
| anybody who has. They are not even getting secondhand
| reports. This is worse than the '80s when the Japanese makers
| arrived in the sense that in the '80s everybody could see the
| quality of the Toyotas and assess quality/performance for
| themselves. It's much worse to not even know how good the
| competition is.
|
| From a business standpoint, it's especially bad for the
| domestic industry because the majors actually do need to be
| competitive in fast-growing regions like Latin America, Asia,
| and Africa. It's not a viable strategy to depend on
| protectionism at home while ceding countries where most
| people live.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Everyone's take on the 1980s has been perverted by an
| internet viewpoint written by a bunch of weeb fanboys
| projecting the state of the car market in 2006 onto 1985.
| The actual cores components of the cars themselves are
| basically within spitting distance for Japan vs Domestic.
| These were not high quality cars. They were all low quality
| cars. But Japan was making the king of low quality cars
| that people wanted. (And by 1990 all these early 1980s
| platforms from all makes were all comparatively trash).
|
| In the late 1970s early 1980s if you tried to buy a compact
| american car it was like buying the burger at a fish
| restaurant or the vegetarian option at a steakhouse. It was
| there to check a box. It wasn't well thought out or a core
| product they gave a shit about and they were almost always
| last to get any innovations. You want power widows AND an
| automatic, sorry we'll have to special order that, we don't
| stock those on the lot.
|
| In contrast, the Japanese gave a shit about those product
| lines. So someone making "In better times I'd be buying a
| bigger car from Chevy" money could go to them and get
| something configured how they wanted without being told no
| a bunch of times and the sales guy trying to get them into
| something bigger car didn't want like would happen at the
| Chevy dealer. Toyota or Honda or whoever literally didn't
| have those products to upsell you into. Yeah I guess they
| could sell you a landcruiser but people didn't buy SUVs
| then. That would be like trying to sell an Econoline to
| some rich woman who's shopping for a 3row Landrover.
|
| At the end of the 1980s the domestics were basically back
| with their own new "modern" FWD platforms (e.g. Taurus) and
| new larger stuff (minivans, midsize SUVs) which made money
| hand over fist for 10yr or so. The Japanese were basically
| on the sidelines for all of this. Like yeah they had the
| 4Runner and Pathfinnder and Passport and stuff but no
| amount of 2020s fanboyism is gonna make those sales numbers
| any less of a joke. What the Japanese did do very well
| though was give a crap about their smaller cheaper
| offerings, Rav4s and CRVs and small and midsize sedans
| which the domestics neglected. So when the SUV craze came
| to an end with the high gas prices and bad economy of the
| mid-late 2000s they were there ready to be bought. And it's
| this great success from the mid 2000s that every idiot on
| the internet seems to want to project back into the 1980s
| when the 1980s were far different.
| otterley wrote:
| Also, the U.S. auto makers had a well-deserved reputation
| for building unreliable vehicles, probably exacerbated by
| the phase-out of lead from gasoline, while Japanese
| vehicles were easily exceeding 100,000 miles without any
| significant breakdowns. This provided a tremendous
| advantage to Japanese makes and proved extremely
| attractive to American customers.
| runako wrote:
| > Everyone's take on the 1980s
|
| Nope, I was there.
|
| You're generally agreeing with me? You're making an
| argument that American makers improved by exposure to
| Japanese makers, and yes I am suggesting they also need
| exposure to Chinese makers for the same reasons.
|
| > Japan was making the king of low quality cars that
| people wanted
|
| This is China today, except by all accounts they are
| simply inexpensive and not low quality. Your bit about
| buying a compact car in the 80s has echoes in American
| automakers largely exiting the market for cars. (IIRC
| it's only Tesla, Lucid, the Mustang, and a couple Caddy
| models remaining.)
|
| The main point is that in the 80s we could all see for
| ourselves Japanese cars. We could talk to people about
| how they liked them. People working at Ford could drive a
| Honda and figure out how to compete against it. That laid
| the ground for the resurgence of the American makers.
| Protectionism is depriving the automakers of this
| opportunity to retool to compete with the Chinese.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >You're generally agreeing with me? You're making an
| argument that American makers improved by exposure to
| Japanese makers, and yes I am suggesting they also need
| exposure to Chinese makers for the same reasons.
|
| Partially. I agree on the economic lines. But disagreeing
| on the oft circle jerked quality bit.
|
| These were not "high quality" cars even in their day nor
| were they "higher than the competing product" on any non-
| subjective axis (the Japanese and europeans did make very
| different decisions than the americans on some preference
| based things though). By "low quality" I do not mea low
| value. I mean low end. These were not designed to be
| "nice" cars. They were built to a price. These were not
| cars you got into and said "man, everything I touch feels
| solid" and "this is a pleasurable driving experience".
| They got called tin cans for a reason. They were
| inexpensive compacts and midsize vehicles but what they
| got right was they nailed the contribution of attributes
| everyone wanted and so they sold very well.
|
| I absolutely agree that exposure let the other OEMs get
| better.
| alecco wrote:
| > Source: company statements
|
| Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars in public parking
| lots: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/byd-australia-
| accused-...
|
| And BYD sits on a pile of debt they use to pay suppliers
| expecting ever-increasing sales (Evergrande business model).
| https://medium.com/@davidsehyeonbaek/a-deep-dive-into-byds-s...
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It seems that BYD are storing cars improperly but there's
| nothing in the first link about financial engineering.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A car transport holds thousands of ships. Therefore requiring
| temporary storage for thousands of cars is normal.
|
| Even if you count the massive "hidden debt", BYD's debt load is
| still a small fraction of the big car makers, many of whom hold
| over $200 billion in debt.
| honeycrispy wrote:
| Which car makers? Ford, GMC, Chevrolet are all closer to $100
| billion. Tesla holds $13b.
| chollida1 wrote:
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/automakers-with-
| th...
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Wow! Toyota $269B debt vs BYD $5.6B debt
| baxtr wrote:
| A friend of mine works in the chemical industry in Europe. One
| reason European producers are currently facing challenges is
| that Chinese producers are dumping chemicals into the global
| market at heavy discounts.
|
| The underlying cause of this is that the Chinese housing
| market, which previously absorbed almost all chemicals, has
| effectively stalled (Evergrande, et al.).
|
| I wonder whether we're observing a similar effect in the
| automobile industry as well.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Yes, but causality is backwards: the Chinese housing market
| stalled because China took the debt punch-bowl away from
| housing and gave it to the industrial sector.
|
| It's also worth mentioning that loan subsidies play a bigger
| role in Chinese capital markets: Chinese industry is largely
| capitalized with state debt rather than private debt/equity
| or public markets. Zooming out, as a response to Trump's 1st
| term tariffs China went on a big autarky push by redirecting
| its citizens' and companies' deposits into a loan bazooka for
| the industrial sector. We are now seeing the fruits of that.
| The big questions have to do with (true) profitability and
| (true) balance sheets: can the new industries service their
| debts well enough for the government to hold face?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| BYD owns their own fleet of car carriers for export, with the
| capacity to have ~30k vehicles shipping to other markets at any
| one time on their vessels. From this piece:
|
| > BYD Deliveries outside of China hit 1.05 million in 2025. The
| company has set a goal to expand overseas sales to between 1.5
| million to 1.6 million units in 2026, according to a Citigroup
| Inc. report in November that cited a meeting with BYD
| management.
|
| Edit: The debt is irrelevant, China isn't America. They'll
| nationalize and inflate away any institutional debt or wipe it
| out, but still have a third of the world's manufacturing
| capacity. Tesla exists on vibes, Chinese EV makers build, for
| example. jmyeet's comment mostly nails this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46456020
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424124 (citations)
|
| (global light vehicle TAM is ~90M units/year, and Chinese EV
| automakers are going to soak the market with their production
| capacity)
| faitswulff wrote:
| > They'll nationalize and inflate away any institutional debt
| or wipe it out
|
| This is just the reverse, actually, China isn't afraid to go
| so far as to jail CEOs. There is no such thing as too big to
| fail in China, and all the Chinese domestic companies know
| it. The bailout playbook is a western thing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| China has been performing debt swaps with local governments
| to clean up their balance sheets [1], so used as an
| example. Agree with all of your comment. People make the
| mistake that China plays by artificial US capital market
| rules around profit and debt; they do not. They optimize
| for physical world success, not line go up.
|
| [1] _Why China Is Hoping $1.6 Trillion Can Fix Its Hidden
| Debt Problem_ -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-16/china-
| eco... | https://archive.today/HsaHV - April 16th, 2025
| faitswulff wrote:
| Ah, I think I get it. Are you saying that regardless of
| BYD's continued existence, China will still have 1/3 of
| the world's manufacturing capacity?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Just as in the US, when an enterprise gets
| wiped out and recapitalized, all of the physical assets
| remain. In China's case, they are the backstop of last
| resort, and will always recapitalize according to their
| nation state planning and target outcomes. They allow
| companies to operate the assets as long as the Chinese
| government is willing to allow it, but they remain assets
| of China.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| They only jail the people that upset the regime.
| ben_w wrote:
| From the outside, it appears that "upset the regime"
| includes "cheating your way into profits".
|
| That said, it's very difficult to be sure if what I see
| from the outside is propaganda. Or rather, it is always
| propaganda even when it's true, and I can't tell how much
| of it is China's own self-promotion vs. other people
| giving negative propaganda.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| You don't think president Xi:s family and friends
| cheated? Of course they have. Yet they don't go to
| prison.
| ben_w wrote:
| I'm saying from the outside, it doesn't look like that.
| That's a much weaker statement, as should've been obvious
| from what I went on to say about propaganda.
|
| Example of cheating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offici
| als_implicated_by_the_an...
|
| And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scan
| dal#Arre...
|
| Nevertheless, it would be interesting if someone could,
| you know, _prove_ , and not merely _allege_ , that Xi
| Jinping's family or friends cheated.
| ctchocula wrote:
| https://panamapapers.org/case-study-china
| specialp wrote:
| China has a huge deflation problem that they export to the
| world via cheap products. They have a lot of capacity and not
| enough consumers. So in China, an unstated mild Keynesian
| approach makes sense. They can sweep debt under the rug and
| take in inflation from net debtor countries
| baxtr wrote:
| Which on the one hand is great because through that China
| exports material wealth to the world.
|
| At the same time production capacity outside of China has
| to compete with this "rigged" system, which is near
| impossible to do.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Falling prices, sounds like the way things should be as
| real technology and markets develop. Inflation is not
| natural.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| regarding: "Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars in
| public parking lots" Sure you can post a speculative article,
| but this link is far more informative.
| https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/byd-car-park-mystery-s...
|
| It doesn't really appear to be anything of grand significance.
| thesmtsolver2 wrote:
| Also their abysmal human rights record
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Dumping notwithstanding, they're still selling cars into the
| Australian market in enormous numbers. Four of the top ten EVs
| sold this year are BYD, as are the top two PHEVs.
|
| https://www.drive.com.au/news/australias-best-selling-cars-b...
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Dumping notwithstanding, BYD is still selling cars into the
| Australian market in enormous numbers. Four of the top ten EVs
| sold this year are BYD, as are the top two PHEVs.
|
| If you account for the fact that Australian market Teslas are
| built in China, then China is producing 8 of the top 10 EVs.
|
| https://www.drive.com.au/news/australias-best-selling-cars-b...
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I think EU/NA residents are a little naive on how much Chinese
| cars are dominating the market. Chinese cars don't sell just in
| China. They utterly dominate globally outside of EU/NA where they
| face extreme tariffs. To the point where certain cars that you'd
| say were American (eg. Tesla) actually make most of their cars in
| China.
|
| Right now around the world in non EU/NA countries Tesla's a bit
| on the nose. All Tesla's in Australia are Chinese made regardless
| but it's then a choice of Chinese made Tesla vs Chinese made BYD
| and the BYDs are by all reports excellent cars.
|
| PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same car,
| even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made cars in
| and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened you.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > They utterly dominate globally outside of EU/NA where they
| face extreme tariffs.
|
| Even inside of EU, seemingly BYD have reasonable prices,
| especially compared to their EU competitors. I'm an current
| Audi owner in Spain, who is currently very close of getting a
| BYD DM-i Touring, and compared to what I would get from Audi
| for the same price, BYD still offers a lot more in everything
| except "nice steering feeling", at least from what I've
| gathered from my test drives.
| eisa01 wrote:
| That's because the car lobby only cared about electric
| vehicle tariffs, the petrol cars from China are tax free
|
| (There's also anti-dumping tariffs on electric bikes from
| China, I wonder if it's the same lobby...)
| t0mas88 wrote:
| As a long term BMW driver instead of Audi I have the same.
| I'm swapping one of my two BMWs for a Model Y Premium. Also
| tried the BYD 7 but the Model Y felt nicer to drive and with
| more space.
|
| The BMW iX1 is disappointing in range, interior luxury and
| power. It's below an older 6 series (that I'm switching
| from), and much less powerful than a Model Y AWD. No idea why
| BMW thinks they can price it like they do. The other option
| was the BMW i5 Touring but it's more expensive and feels
| "old" already.
| greggoB wrote:
| Your entire comment reads a bit like an ad for Chinese cars,
| conveniently omitting the damage these automakers are doing to
| the global car industry by dumping cheap supply wherever they
| can to secure market share, all enabled by _heavy_ state
| subsidies. [0]
|
| > PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same
| car, even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made
| cars in and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened
| you.
|
| Because given the chance, China 100% would _never_ do the same
| (or worse).
|
| [0] https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-
| dil...
| interactivecode wrote:
| Are the big capitalist car companies scared of some strong
| competition? Maybe they should innovate instead of lobby
| against international competition
| swarnie wrote:
| Lets assume all this is true, why should i be concerned about
| it?
|
| If the Chinese tax payer is going to help me buy a new car
| then thanks, my own government isn't going to do that.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Because over time when your own industries suffer and then
| become jobless, your country is less secure and wealthy.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| The Chinese tax payer isn't voluntarily helping you though,
| it's China's forced resource extraction from its own
| citizens (wage and QoL suppression), to maintain a
| stranglehold on global manufacturing. Everybody (except
| your specific car purchase) would be better off if they
| used these resources domestically. Do you think they'll
| ever want payback? if not from you, then from the next
| generations.
| seydor wrote:
| it's not like cars are necessities like food. and i doubt
| these companies are unprofitable - the chinese govt has no
| incentive to provide the world with free cars.
| azinman2 wrote:
| It does if it meant everyone else went out of business and
| became dependent then on China
| seydor wrote:
| that's like saying that apple should sell the iphone for
| $10 to capture the market. meanwhile apple does the
| opposite
|
| The chinese are not entering a saturated market here,
| they are building it and apparently dominating it by
| creating the best value
|
| They did the same with PV panels, their plan was to make
| PV cheap for china, and in the process they became
| supercheap for the rest of the world too.
| runako wrote:
| > dumping cheap supply wherever they can to secure market
| share, all enabled by heavy state subsidies
|
| Assuming for a moment this is more true for China than for
| other countries. Why would the average Canadian prefer to pay
| more for their next car versus having a similar car
| subsidized by the Chinese taxpayer? Most Canadians do not
| work in the auto industry. Further, the protectionism
| practiced in the EU/US/Canada is not likely to be successful
| long-term, meaning those auto industries are doomed.
|
| Best path forward is to let in competition, make the
| domestics stronger, and let consumers get cheaper cars in the
| meanwhile. Provide some additional temporary support if
| necessary. (This is more or less how the US absorbed Japanese
| and then Korean cars.)
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The auto industry is a shockingly high percentage of the
| Canadian economy, somewhere around 10% of GDP. Direct auto
| manufacturing roles are themselves about 1% of jobs
| nationally. If we start counting everyone involved with the
| sector, it's >5% of people in Ontario. It's not a winning
| political move to make all of those people unemployed.
| runako wrote:
| Fair for Canada. In the US, the entire auto production
| economy employs fewer people than Amazon does in the US.
| maxglute wrote:
| Let's be real, if Trump wants to reshore US auto
| factories from Ontario to Detroit, as he has stated
| explicitly, Canadian politicians can't do shit, USMCA be
| paper after all. Right now CAN just waiting for term to
| blow over and hope there's no Trump3. But ultimately if
| CA auto is going away / shrinking to irrelevance, at some
| point winning political move is to give masses cheap
| cars.
| demosito666 wrote:
| > Best path forward is to let in competition
|
| To compete with China in the "open market" now, Canada will
| need:
|
| - 25 years of investments in infrastructure and education
| in STEM and manufacturing
|
| - Targeted state subsidies of chosen branches, which will
| require
|
| - transition to at least partially planned economy, which
| will require
|
| - at least partially transitioning to some form of
| dictatorial governance
|
| - increase population at least twofold (you need multiple
| multi-million metro areas to support large high-tech
| clusters)
|
| - devaluate CAD about 2x and accept about the same drop in
| local purchasing power (which likely will happen anyway,
| but could be not that harsh and fast).
|
| China at the moment has like 10x advantage in industry ober
| Canada, it's impossible to compete. It's like saying that
| your immune system must be able to handle bubonic plague,
| so let's just inject the body with the pathogen and let it
| adapt without any external support. A noble idea, but
| you'll likely die in the process.
| shimman wrote:
| I'm not really seeing the issue with this. Capitalists will
| tell you this is a good thing because consumers will benefit,
| or is that only capitalism if it benefits the American
| elites?
|
| Why should I care that the CEO of Ford is struggling when he
| pays his workers so terrible? If they want another government
| bail it, we should just nationalize the industry and
| implement workplace democracy for the staff so they can be
| accountable to the workers + people in some fashion.
|
| But yeah, it's sad seeing the demise of US liberalism but
| what do you expect when the last 50 years was naked
| imperialism for corporations while denying any social
| responsibility for the country?
| didibus wrote:
| I feel like closing off access is a bad long term strategy.
| Instead of being forced to compete and match or outmatch
| competition Canadian manufacturing can get complacent and
| lean on restrictions. But the whole thing feels like a
| ticking bomb.
| DustinEchoes wrote:
| > PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same
| car, even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made
| cars in and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened
| you.
|
| The sheer irony of an Australian saying this! I mean you're in
| danger, dude!
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/world/china-live-fire-drills-...
|
| The naivety of the comments here is just astonishing.
| dhx wrote:
| Compare at the same scale:
|
| Vantor Legion-2 image of the BYD plant in Zhengzhou as captured
| on 18 January 2025:
| https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=113.9361%2...
|
| Vantor WorldView-3 image of the Tesla plant in Austin as captured
| on 31 January 2024:
| https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=-97.6189%2...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| _The size of BYD 's factory_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228138 - November 2024
| (615 comments)
| pengaru wrote:
| Uncaught TypeError: this._shaderModuleClass.inputs.findLast is
| not a function
| padjo wrote:
| I've been hearing about the rise of the Chinese car industry for
| 20 years, judging by the number of BYDs I'm now seeing it has
| finally happened.
| melling wrote:
| China is the largest car market in the world. Almost twice as
| large as the United States.
| the_arun wrote:
| Xiaomi is another maker. I saw a good review on Xiaomi SU7 -
| https://youtu.be/Mb6H7trzMfI by Marques Brownlee
| justinhj wrote:
| They also migrated 100s of millions of mopeds to electric bikes
| and shipped new ebikes over the last 10 years. That enormous
| scale no doubt fed directly to battery technology and assembly
| techniques that help with cars. Many Chinese don't own cars.
| (That's changing fast).
| renewiltord wrote:
| If you only travel to North America and Europe you'd never know
| but I went to South America and India and the former mostly had
| Chinese cars and the latter had big ads for a BYD MPV
| everywhere in Bangalore.
|
| So the Chinese car makers are popular outside the West. I drove
| a couple of Changan cars and they weren't even as nice as my
| Subaru in terms of handling but they functioned well as cars.
| object-a wrote:
| For anyone who has tried cars from both automakers, how does BYD
| compare to Tesla on similar trim vehicles?
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| If you had to pay US/EU prices for a Tesla vs BYD you'd go with
| BYD no question. But the majority of Teslas are made in China
| and when put a Chinese made Tesla alongside a Chinese made BYD
| it's a coin flip.
|
| So as an Australian I'd roughly rate them the same with BYD
| high end matching Tesla's high end and BYD having a low end
| that Tesla doesn't compete with (the Atto which is ~USD $15000
| for a small electric hatchback has no Tesla equivalent).
| mvdtnz wrote:
| BYD doesn't sell in USA.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Byd Auto Motor, Inc. 1800 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA
| 90015 https://www.byd.international/city/los-angeles
| linsomniac wrote:
| Ok, but "where the rubber meets the road", I've seen 0
| BYDs in the wild in the US, including a recent 1,800 mile
| trip half way across the country. Earlier in 2025 I took
| a trip to Scotland and they had 2 dealerships I saw and I
| saw a couple of them on the roads.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| The point is the difficulty of the comparison. They are
| tariffed in the EU and NA to the point of near inviability
| so I don't see that as a valid comparison. Outside the EU
| and NA they are Chinese made cars.
|
| So basically you either compare current NA/EU Teslas to a
| hypothetical untariffed BYD (I don't think this is fair) or
| you compare Chinese made Teslas to BYDs (which of course
| leads to similar prive perf ratios).
| zipy124 wrote:
| Isn't the seagull the cheapest model at like $8k?
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Same car, called the Atto 1 in Australia and with the
| steering wheel on the other side and slightly better than
| base specs in Australia.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| BYD Sealion 7 is better than a 2025 Model Y Standard and worse
| than a Model Y Premium in terms of ride quality/suspension and
| driving dynamics.
|
| The interior is more taste dependent, but the Model Y Standard
| is clearly a low budget version (with fabric seats) that's
| below the BYD. The Model Y Premium interior and seats felt
| higher quality to me, but it has a more minimalist design while
| the BYD has a more traditional setup with a screen behind the
| wheel.
|
| The Tesla screen/app seem more responsive and premium. Also
| above for example VW where things are often sluggish and don't
| feel as well designed from a UX perspective.
| object-a wrote:
| Thank you for answering the question
| jmyeet wrote:
| We are seeing the culmination of the 50+ China industrialization
| project at the samme time as the West's 50+ year financialization
| and deindustrialization project, all to concentrate even more
| wealth in the hands of the 0.01%.
|
| China is really the only country capable and willing to build
| infrastructure. The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China
| is massively backfiring. The chip ban in particular has created a
| captive market for Chinese chips. In 1945, American
| exceptionalists believed the USSR would take 20+ yars to copy the
| atomic bomb, if they could do it at all. It took 4 years. China
| will do the same thing with EUV in the coming years.
|
| Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by
| government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the
| tariffs and import bans on BYD in the US and much of Europe.
|
| Additionally, Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth
| exports for its products.
|
| As an example of how China uses state power, a famine in the 20th
| century caused China to decide that food security was a national
| security interest. The availability of cheap, quality food is
| viewed as essential and the state intervenes to ensure that
| continues. Likewise for housing.
|
| Western companies seem increasingly focused on the top 10%
| because the bottom 90% have nothing left to eextract.
| modeless wrote:
| I've never seen a comment simultaneously be so right on some
| things and so wrong on others.
|
| > The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is
| massively backfiring
|
| Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip
| fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable
| advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is
| ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them down
| a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab juggernaut later
| is folly.
|
| > Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely
| by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of
| the tariffs
|
| Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than any
| other car company and less than many including BYD obviously.
| They also compete directly with BYD without tariff protection
| worldwide _and in China_ and do well. They are worth a trillion
| dollars because of the potential of their self-driving software
| which is far ahead of any other car company 's including those
| in China.
|
| > Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports
| for its products.
|
| Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent need
| for them right now but they can switch if necessary.
| Recurecur wrote:
| > Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip
| fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable
| advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is
| ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them
| down a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab
| juggernaut later is folly.
|
| I'm quite sure advanced semiconductor fabs are considered a
| strategic necessity by China regardless of restrictions.
| Further, China is now getting the H200 chip...
|
| > Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent
| need for them right now but they can switch if necessary.
|
| There are also plenty of rare earth extraction projects
| coming online outside of China!
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than
| any other car company
|
| Tesla was saved by a DOE loan [1]. Tesla was kept afloat with
| carbon tax credits. Yes, the Big Three got bailouts in 2008.
| And now, most importantly, import barriers are the only thing
| keeping Tesla afloat.
|
| [1]: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-
| environment/573148-dept-o...
| modeless wrote:
| "Tesla got some subsidies" does not refute my argument. All
| carmakers get subsidies. BYD gets tons! And Tesla is
| selling plenty of cars in places without import barriers
| protecting them _including China itself_.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| China is a food importer and Chinese housing, especially in the
| tier 1 cities, is as expensive as anywhere in the world.
| asa400 wrote:
| It's like the 1970s all over again with how the US Big 3 makers
| are facing an existential threat held at bay only by
| protectionism. They're going to have to learn to compete yet
| again.
| pm90 wrote:
| Did they ever learn to compete then? The only thing that
| protected them then was that Japan was a US "ally" and could be
| "persuaded" to go along with protectionism. China has no such
| need.
|
| I would argue that the 70s were a trial run for whats happening
| today but instead of becoming more competitive the automakers
| focused on lobbying for Government help; a playbook that won't
| help them today.
|
| And even more stupidly, traditional American carmarkers are
| discontinuing EV models and shutting down factories JUST when
| they finally had an edge over their japanese competitors.
| Recurecur wrote:
| Outside the purely electric vehicles (where I believe Tesla
| competes very well, where is BYD at with FSD?), is there a
| Chinese equivalent to:
|
| - The upcoming EREV (mostly electric extended range hybrid)
| F-150 truck? This is expected to have ~700 mile range, and of
| course no charging hassles. It's main advantage over the now
| defunct Lightning will be towing range.
|
| - The Chevy Corvette Stingray? Say what you want, but the
| high end ICE sports cars have an appeal of their own...
|
| I believe the USA still has an edge in some areas of the
| market.
| dzonga wrote:
| American car manufacturers don't play to their strengths
| e.g affordable sports cars - Chevy Corvette Stingray |
| Mustang GT how many are sold in foreign markets
|
| the Bronco could make a killing in Africa but is it sold
| there NO. I understand here in the states the 4runner has
| no competition - yet ford wants to kill it using the
| Bronco. Why not use the Bronco to kill the land cruiser in
| markets where people default to a Land Cruiser / Fortuner
| and force Toyota to play defense.
|
| E.g in Africa certain markets Ford started selling the Ford
| Ranger Raptor and they're making a killing - and actually
| starting to cause Toyota to compete and not bring their
| usual stale cars.
|
| However Chinese have brought their A-game too - Tank 300,
| BYD Shark etc
| dzonga wrote:
| also American car manufacturers have a good advantage in
| diesel engines: Duramax etc
| beAbU wrote:
| There is no way that a land cruiser owner in Africa will
| ever consider anything made by Ford. That's like
| blasphemy. The LC has decades of proven reliability, that
| the bronco needs to compete with.
|
| It's true, the Ranger is immensely popular. But Ranger
| owners and LC owners do _not_ see eye to eye and you 'll
| have a tough time convincing the LC owner to change
| allegiance.
|
| For South Africa specifically, the Ranger is about as
| large as you can go in terms of personal vehicle, before
| it becomes a serious hassle. Our infrastructure does not
| really support bigger cars. How does the bronco compare
| with the Ranger size wise?
|
| Lastly, the Ranger is built in South Africa, I think Ford
| knows and understands the Southern African market very
| well.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > - The upcoming EREV (mostly electric extended range
| hybrid) F-150 truck? This is expected to have ~700 mile
| range, and of course no charging hassles. Its main
| advantage over the now defunct Lightning will be towing
| range.
|
| Interesting question. Maybe this is the niche where
| existing auto makers can thrive though if China automakers
| have a blind spot to outdoors enthusiasts where range is
| more important.
|
| The problem is that no one really needs or wants this
| outside of NA, Australia, maybe Russia and Africa? But
| there is a market.
|
| Range anxiety and towing is a niche problem and companies
| will get rich selling the next Toyota Camry/VW Golf for the
| median consumer.
|
| EREV is niche on niche and that's sort of where I expect
| the NA market to be going under the NA auto makers. We're
| going to have this protectionist wall where we have these
| bizarre (increasingly ICE dominated) market while the rest
| of the world moves on.
| lossolo wrote:
| > where is BYD at with FSD?
|
| I'm not sure about BYD, but other car makers have FSD that
| works like Tesla's FSD, and in some cases it even
| outperforms it. Here is a test from a few months ago:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuDSz06BT2g
|
| > - The Chevy Corvette Stingray? Say what you want, but the
| high end ICE sports cars have an appeal of their own...
|
| The world is moving to EVs, ICE will mostly be collectors
| cars in 20 years in developed countries. As to Chinese
| sports cars Xiaomi SU7 Ultra: "June 2025, an unmodified SU7
| Ultra (with a maximum 1,139 kW (1,527 hp; 1,549 PS) power)
| lapped the Nurburgring in a hair under 7 minutes, 5
| seconds. It is not only faster than the fastest Tesla Model
| S Plaid and Porsche Taycan versions, but also faster than a
| Rimac Nevera, one of the most high-end and expensive
| electric sportscars."
|
| U9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangwang_U9 is a supercar
| produced by BYD, fastest in the world.
|
| "It achieved a maximum speed of 496.22 km/h (308.33 mph) at
| Germany's ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg, making it the
| fastest car in the world and breaking the record previously
| held by the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ at 490.484 km/h
| (304.773 mph)"
| asa400 wrote:
| > Did they ever learn to compete then? The only thing that
| protected them then was that Japan was a US "ally" and could
| be "persuaded" to go along with protectionism. China has no
| such need.
|
| Oh, indeed. I was attempting to be generous, but it's
| arguable whether they deserve that generosity.
|
| > I would argue that the 70s were a trial run for whats
| happening today but instead of becoming more competitive the
| automakers focused on lobbying for Government help; a
| playbook that won't help them today.
|
| We're still paying for this today with the so-called "Chicken
| Tax" (and all of the other crash and emissions regulations)
| that has deprived us so many good Japanese trucks over the
| years.
| englishspot wrote:
| ford in particular seems to only ever give up on everything.
| they couldn't compete on compacts, so they killed the focus
| and fiesta. they couldn't compete on EVs, so they killed
| those too. next thing you know toyota will start carving away
| at the F-150's market share and they'll kill that, too.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I see electric/hybrid BYD cars more and more every day.
| Meanwhile, US/EU automakers are still struggling to offer
| anything barely competitive.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I know that "laziness" is kind of a generic/useless criticism
| to throw at a company or sector, but there really is that vibe
| for EVs in the West.
| raverbashing wrote:
| I really wonder what are the parts where BYD gets its
| competitiveness from vs where it might be behind
|
| Software explains a lot, dumping explains some of it but it
| might not be all of it
| timbit42 wrote:
| Japanese engineers disassembled a BYD vehicle said BYD's
| E-Axle drive system was so advanced it would take them 10
| years to replicate it. BYD's blade batteries are also a
| major competitive advantage.
| tonfa wrote:
| Isn't China at the forefront of battery technology (and BYD
| was initially a battery company).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Not angering the oligarchs who profit from oil appears to be
| the root cause.
|
| This then flows downstream to inconsistent and patchwork
| government support for the transition to EVs.
|
| The short term incentives aren't all properly aligned for car
| makers to fully commit to build EVs and support the supply
| chain to do that.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Decades from now we're going to look at the oil patch
| lobbyists as the villains that killed countless jobs in NA
| and enabled China to take over whole industries.
|
| You had some politicians like Justin Trudeau that tried to
| create a frame work that would guide and advantage capital
| toward investing in innovative green technology and future
| jobs, but then politicians saw the advantage in
| politicizing and opposing everything and they tore this all
| down.
|
| Now China has continued to move ahead meanwhile NA remains
| at square one with increasingly backward technology, with
| no incentive to change.
|
| It's going to get really bad!
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Triffin Dilemma, not laziness. This is a macroeconomic
| problem.
| rapsey wrote:
| EU car makers need to confirm to insane EU laws regarding every
| little thing.
| raverbashing wrote:
| BYD selling to Europe would also need to conform to these
| runako wrote:
| Don't Chinese makers need to conform to the same EU laws when
| selling cars in the EU? That's how it works in the US.
| monooso wrote:
| _Every_ car maker selling cars in the EU needs to comply with
| EU laws.
|
| That's why Europe is mercifully free of Cybertrucks: they
| can't legally operate on roads within the EU, because they
| don't meet the safety requirements (one of your "little
| things").
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Exactly the same rules for BYD, Tesla etc (maybe with the
| exception of second hand private import)
| nutjob2 wrote:
| > every little thing
|
| ie, killing people and polluting the planet, mostly.
| malshe wrote:
| I bought BYD stock in 2025 before split in the hope that their
| market dominance will translate to great returns. The stock has
| pretty consistently traded down since then. Meanwhile Tesla stock
| soared purely on the air coming out of Elon's mouth.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay
| solvent."
|
| But as another comment pointed out, they have tons of debt, and
| TFA states that their "revised" target was revised downward,
| meaning earlier stock valuations were priced for higher sales.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Chinese stocks don't seem to follow any reality either. BYD is
| basically flat over 5 years.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The explanation that I'm finding more and more compelling is
| that this is because there's actual competition in China,
| whereas in the west conglomerates have been able to carve up
| the market into fiefdoms and feast, with increasing amounts
| of cash that they can funnel into dividends and buybacks.
|
| From the NA vehicle POV it doesn't look healthy. Stocks of
| the major auto makers have done well this year, while product
| gets more and more expensive and limited. Barely seems
| possible to buy anything but a F150like anymore.
| thesmtsolver2 wrote:
| Outside of EVs and more broadly China rates near the bottom
| for market freedom
|
| https://gfmag.com/data/economic-freedom-by-country/
|
| If the broader market is rigged, investors don't rush in
| for just one segment.
| bparsons wrote:
| Interesting definition of freedom. The top three
| countries happen to be the places most permissive to
| international tax dodgers.
| Sayrus wrote:
| > produced by the Heritage Foundation
|
| > Twelve are the factors related to four key aspects of
| the economic environment that are graded from 0 to 100
| and averaged to determine a country's score: rule of law
| (and related sub-categories: property rights, government
| integrity, judicial effectiveness); government size
| (government spending, tax burden, fiscal health);
| regulatory efficiency (business, labor and monetary
| freedom); open markets (trade, investment and financial
| freedom).
|
| Quite the definition they made up.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Perhaps the rating is also rigged.
| phatfish wrote:
| Western corporations optimise for share price. The way to
| do that is by pulling strings at the government level to
| block your competitors and by getting nice tax breaks; not
| by having the best product for the consumer.
|
| China and Chinese companies still want to shake off the
| "China means bad quality" image, so they actually want to
| make a great product at a good price for the consumer. To-
| the-moon share price growth doesn't happen by giving your
| customers a good deal.
|
| Also the CCP doesn't want corporations forgetting who calls
| the shots, so there is some internal pressure keeping
| things less "frothy" than Western markets (where most
| governments are running scared of the big global corps).
| bparsons wrote:
| Chinese companies are optimized to grow and build stuff. US
| companies are optimized to deliver returns to shareholders.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Chinese stocks have historically done poorly due to poor
| governance and auditing failures.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| You could say that about the Chinese stock market in general.
| Neither the SSE Composite nor the Hang Seng correlate all
| that well with Chinese GDP growth.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This is the story of nearly every Chinese stock ever. Their
| market is very different and even simple intuitions don't carry
| over.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| > Meanwhile Tesla stock soared purely on the air coming out of
| Elon's mouth.
|
| Wrong orifice.
| newyankee wrote:
| No AI, self driving hype in BYD
| culi wrote:
| BYD's self-driving is free and much more widely available.
| Not to mention it uses LiDAR. I'm not gonna get into whether
| or not their God's Eye is better or worse than Tesla's FSD
| but it's at least widely acknowledged that they are at least
| comparable.
|
| Tesla is also not very transparent so it's hard to cite
| statistics but a recent study found that Tesla had the
| highest rate of fatal accidents of any brand in the US
|
| https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| Purely on the air coming out of Elon's mouth as well as the 1
| million cars sold world wide, 165 successful Falcon 9 launches
| and 9 million Starlink subscriptions
| sgerenser wrote:
| SpaceX's success have no bearing on Tesla. And Tesla's sales
| for the year are down for the second year in a row. Hardly a
| logical reason for the stock to go up.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| your very mistake was trading stocks at all
|
| stocks and the whole money-as-a-business is US thing - making
| actual product is the China thing
| lossolo wrote:
| Chinese stock market is very different than US. In US you have
| like 62% of Americans reporting owning stock (including via
| mutual funds/retirement accounts) and in China, it's single
| digits participation. And China's market is famously retail
| heavy one, there were some studies showing that Shanghai Stock
| Exchange retail trading is 80%+ of volume vs ~10% in the US.
|
| There is less hype and they are also not affected as much as US
| if stock goes down or stays flat.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The Shanghai stock exchange is still too heavy on insider
| trading, and consumer investors feel it is more like gambling
| than investing. Like, you could wager some money on a mahjong
| game, or you could blindly pick a stock and hope you can get
| some money by riding in the wake of a connected insider
| trader.
|
| If you just want to invest money, there is real estate or
| investing in a family member's business. Pensions and other
| institutions in need of safe (in aggregate) investments won't
| go near the SSE yet.
|
| China is doing more things right but still has a long way to
| go on other things.
| paxys wrote:
| The Chinese economy isn't set up to endlessly create value for
| the capital-owning class, so you are never going to profit off
| of Chinese companies and stocks in the way we are used to in
| the west.
| thesmtsolver2 wrote:
| BYD ranks at the bottom for human rights. But interestingly,
| BYD's proponents seem to brush it away.
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Why focus on BYD, China as a whole is effectively a
| totalitarian state that locks up millions because of their
| ethnicity and disappears or executes people who disagree with
| the government. They are also territoriality aggressive and
| routinely use trade as a weapon to pushing states that stand up
| to it.
|
| Buying anything from China is supporting that regime.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I could make a good case for the United States fitting that
| description, _especially_ the bits about trade and agression.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| The inevitable whataboutism.
|
| Firstly it's not relevant to a discussion about China's
| behavior.
|
| Yes the US under Trump has become increasingly
| authoritarian, but besides being not as oppressive as
| China, the US remains a democracy and there is a chance to
| vote bad people out of the White House and more importantly
| reverse the direction of the country.
| echelon wrote:
| The US is complex antihero type.
|
| While it definitely attacks threats and has perpetrated
| plenty of unjust deeds, it also is responsible for the food
| security of much of the world. It has lifted more people
| out of poverty than any other party. It has brought poor
| nations to the point of industrialization.
|
| The US has been a far greater force for good in the world
| than evil.
|
| The leadership changes frequently, so it's hard to point to
| any single responsible party. It's democratic, so its
| institutions are subject to scrutiny. The free press sheds
| light on corruption and rule breaking.
|
| Despite changing immigration narratives, the US has been an
| early and strong proponent of multiculturalism and
| welcoming people.
|
| With declining US hegemony, the world is likely to become a
| much more dangerous place. We'll see more economic strife,
| more war, higher costs, greater tensions.
| newyankee wrote:
| but at least we will have alternative energy sources in
| Solar, wind, batteries and probably a Nuclear renaissance
| which might reduce the incentives on fight for Oil & Gas
| even if the fights move to other resources
| echelon wrote:
| > fights move to other resources
|
| Food (eg. protein, fisheries, etc.), water (eg. dams),
| materials (eg. rare earths), land, strategic geography,
| trade, labor, security, political upheaval, power
| struggles, sectarian violence, terrorism, religion,
| historical claims, climate, etc. etc. etc.
|
| Under a single global order, disagreements were normally
| put aside to participate in global trade. As we begin to
| move to distributed trading blocs and factions, many of
| these disagreements will boil over. Parties won't step up
| to stop them.
| kakacik wrote:
| Change BYD with Tesla, China with US and say for an European
| or anybody all above is still perfectly true.
| lm28469 wrote:
| You missed the part where we chose to move all of our
| industries to China to save money, exploitation was always
| part of the plan, it's just that people who came up with that
| genius plan didn't account for the fact that China would
| develop and want a part of the cake too
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| Your description of China as authoritarian and repressive is
| largely accurate, but the conclusion you draw from it is far
| too binary and ignores major parts of reality on both sides.
|
| China's system has produced outcomes the US cannot come close
| to matching. In a few decades it lifted hundreds of millions
| of people out of extreme poverty. It built nationwide high
| speed rail, dense urban transit, modern housing, and large
| scale infrastructure at a speed the US has not achieved since
| the mid 20th century. Many Chinese cities are cleaner, more
| connected, and more functional than American ones. Long term
| planning, industrial policy, and state coordination have
| delivered tangible improvements in daily life for a huge
| share of the population. Those are not propaganda
| achievements. They are measurable.
|
| China's downsides are also real. Political dissent is not
| protected. Surveillance is pervasive. Ethnic repression,
| especially in Xinjiang, is severe. There is no internal
| mechanism to safely challenge the regime when it abuses
| power. Prosperity is conditional on alignment. When the state
| decides someone or some group is a problem, there is no
| lawful way to resist.
|
| Now look honestly at the US. The US has political freedoms
| China does not. Speech, courts, elections, civil society, and
| the ability to oppose the state without being erased are real
| advantages. That matters enormously. But the US also has a
| long record of extreme violence and moral failure. It
| slaughtered millions abroad in wars like Vietnam and Iraq,
| often based on lies. It overthrew governments, backed death
| squads, enforced sanctions that killed civilians, and built a
| mass incarceration system that destroyed entire communities.
| At home, it tolerates deep inequality, decaying
| infrastructure, and political paralysis. It cannot build
| basic transit or housing at scale, and millions live worse
| materially than citizens of far poorer countries.
|
| So if the standard is "this regime has blood on its hands,"
| then the US fails that test as well. If the standard is "this
| regime produces good outcomes for its people," China clearly
| succeeds in ways the US does not. If the standard is "this
| regime allows its citizens to challenge power and correct
| abuse," the US is better.
|
| That is the real comparison. Different systems optimize for
| different things and fail in different ways. One is not a
| moral fairy tale and the other is not a cartoon villain.
|
| That's why "buying anything from China is supporting evil" is
| not a serious ethical framework. Global trade does not map
| cleanly onto endorsement, and the same logic would implicate
| participation in much of the modern world, including the US
| led order that produced enormous suffering of its own. A
| coherent position is to argue for strategic decoupling or
| limits on state coupled firms. A black and white call for
| regime destruction or moral purity ignores both China's real
| achievements and the US's very real crimes.
|
| Once you include the full ledger, the issue is not good
| versus evil. It's tradeoffs between flawed systems, not a
| simple moral referendum.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| It's also worth noting that these are largely macroscopic,
| state level critiques. For most people living ordinary
| lives in China, many of these issues are not directly
| salient day to day, just as most Americans do not
| experience US foreign policy atrocities, coups, or wars as
| part of their daily existence. People judge their country
| primarily by stability, opportunity, safety, and whether
| life is improving, not by a moral audit of state behavior.
| Viewing China solely through its worst actions is no more
| complete than viewing the US solely through Vietnam, Iraq,
| or mass incarceration. Both perspectives flatten lived
| reality into ideology, and both miss why citizens of each
| country can hold nuanced, even positive, views of systems
| that are clearly flawed.
|
| You really owe it to yourself to visit (or if possible live
| in) China for a while to see this other perspective.
| g947o wrote:
| You can pretty much replace BYD with any Chinese company (and
| to some extent, almost any company in the world) and the
| sentence would still make sense.
|
| So I have mostly lost interest in the argument. Not that it is
| an incorrect or irrelevant argument, but none of that has
| really mattered.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| This. Most of the Chinese products met the definition of
| dumping. They over produce with suppressed wages, currency
| exchange rate, and government subsidies. The current
| generations of Chinese workers do not benefit from this. To
| clarify, they have top products, some are well paid. But the
| general trend is dumping.
|
| I am curious when will other countries would actually start
| of defend their industries properly.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| > They over produce with suppressed wages, currency
| exchange rate, and government subsidies
|
| I mean, so does Germany.
|
| Technically, the USA only has the massive subsidies part
| since the IRA came to be but they also have tariffs so, not
| doing too bad distortion-wise.
|
| At this point in time, pretty much everyone is already
| defending their industries. China is just playing its cards
| better than the others and with a head start when it comes
| to EV.
| ericmay wrote:
| Tariffs aren't the same thing as suppressing wages,
| overproduction, government subsidies, and managed
| currency to prevent deflation.
|
| In the case of the US with respect to China they are
| mostly a retaliation to the above anti-competitive
| practices.
|
| But I hear you on who is playing their cards better. I
| don't think China is playing theirs very well. They
| pissed off both the US and EU, and even Mexico is
| enacting tariffs on Chinese products. American and
| European countries are taking action to stop Chinese
| anti-competitive practices. Nice factories you have
| there, too bad there's nobody to sell those products to.
|
| I also don't know what you mean when you say for example
| the US and Germany are suppressing wages. I'm interested
| in what you mean by that specifically.
| bawolff wrote:
| Presumably you can't make the statement that almost all
| companies are below average on human rights. Mathematically
| at least half have to be above average.
| ginko wrote:
| That'd be the median, not the average.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Torturers Inc, that operates in _$country_i_hate_ and
| tortures 10M people a day, is an outlier adn should not
| be counted
| tshaddox wrote:
| Presumably most people also wouldn't be particularly
| concerned with what the average is. If all companies have
| human rights records ranging from bad to terrible, surely
| it's no compliment to be above average.
| simianparrot wrote:
| "But Tesla bad so BYD is a necessary evil" seems to be a common
| sentiment.
| monerozcash wrote:
| >But interestingly, BYD's proponents seem to brush it away.
|
| This feels like a rather lazy strawman to debate against. Not
| sure there's anything _interesting_ about it.
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