Beijing – For decades, the world’s largest car factory was the Volkswagen complex in Wolfsburg, Germany. But BYD, a Chinese electric car manufacturer, is building two factories in China, each capable of producing twice as wolfsburg cars.
Recent data from China’s Central Bank show that state -controlled banks have lent $ 1.9 trillion more for industrial borrowers in the last four years. On the outskirts of cities throughout China, new factories are being built day and night, and existing factories are being modernized with robots and automation.
China’s investments and advances in manufacturing are generating an export wave that threatens to cause factories and layoffs not only in the United States, but worldwide.
“Tsunami is coming to everyone,” said Katherine Tai, who was a US commerce representative during the government of former President Joe Biden.
The high rates imposed by President Donald Trump, announced on Wednesday, who took actions in Asia and elsewhere plummeted, have been the most drastic response so far to China’s export impetus. From Brazil and Indonesia to Thailand and European Union, many countries have already moved more discreetly to increase tariffs as well.
Chinese leaders are furious with the recent proliferation of commercial barriers, especially Trump’s latest rates. They are proud of China’s high savings rate, long working hours and abundance of engineers and software programmers, as well as their legions of electricians, welders, mechanics, construction workers and other qualified professionals.
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On state television, on Saturday night, an anchor read a solemn statement from the government condemning the United States: “It is using rates to subvert the existing international economic and commercial order” to “serve the hegemonic interests of the United States.”
Five years ago, before the real estate bubble bursts, cranes raising apartment towers scored virtually every cities in China. Today, many of these cracks have disappeared and those who have rarely moved. At Beijing’s request, banks quickly changed their real estate loans to the industry.
China is using more industrial robots than the rest of the combined world, and most of them are manufactured in China by Chinese companies, although some components are still imported. After several years of rapid growth, the general facilities of new factory equipment has increased another 18% this year. When Zeekr, a Chinese electric car manufacturer, opened a factory for four years in Ningbo, two hours south of Shanghai, the installation had 500 robots. Now it has 820, and many more are planned.
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As new factories come into operation, China’s exports are rapidly accelerating. They increased by 13.3% by 2023 and 17.3% more last year.
Financing of state banks is also boosting a boom in research and corporate development. Huawei, a conglomerate that manufactures items as varied as smartphones and car parts, has just opened a survey center in Shanghai for 35,000 engineers, which has 10 times more space for office and laboratories than Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Leaders from around the world are struggling to decide whether to increase trade barriers to protect what remains from the industrial sectors of their countries.
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China has quickly expanded its participation in global manufacturing for decades. Growth occurred mainly at the expense of the United States and other longtime industrial powers, but also from developing countries. China’s participation increased to 32% and continues to grow from 6% in 2000.
China’s manufacturing production is larger than the sum of the manufacturing of the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain.
Even before Trump wins a second term, Biden administration officials warned over their last year in his position on industrial overcapacity in China. They increased some rates, notably about electric cars.
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But during their first three years, Biden administration officials focused mainly on stricter export controls for high -level technologies, citing national security concerns. They kept 7.5% to 25% rates that Trump had imposed half of China’s exports to the United States in its first term.
It remains uncertain as the president’s much more rigorous approach this time will unfold. Occasionally slowing tariffs have slowed export growth in China, but did not stop it. Other nations are on the maximum warning that Chinese exports can be diverted elsewhere, threatening the economies of longtime allies, such as South EU and Korea.
Robert E. Lighthizer, who was a US commerce representative in Trump’s first term, said the latest US tariffs “are a long -back medicine – the real cause of Chinese industrial policies that created impressive overcapacity and global imbalances.”
c.2025 The New York Times Company
