【文章标题】：The Rise of China’s Electric Vehicle Industry
【文章标题】：中国电动汽车产业的崛起
【文章正文】： How did China grow its EV industry? Hint: it wasn’t really central planning from Beijing. It was a magical concoction of entrepreneurs and local officials using their guanxi to dance around giant SOEs and central-government regulation, leverage private and foreign capital, and just be really excellent business people. That’s led to our situation in 2026 — world-beating companies that have a ton of overcapacity and are set to take over the planet.
【文章正文】： 中国是如何发展其电动汽车产业的？提示：这并非真正来自北京的中央计划。这是一剂由企业家和地方官员调制的神奇配方——他们利用自己的“关系”，在大型国企和中央监管的缝隙中周旋，撬动私人资本和外资，并且确实是极为出色的商人。这导致了我们在2026年看到的局面——拥有大量过剩产能、准备接管全球的世界级企业。
To discuss, we have ANU Professor Fengming Lu, who recently wrote a fantastic paper in The China Journal, titled The Rise of China’s Electric Vehicle Industry: Strategic Alliances Between Local Governments and Private Capital, alongside Irene Zhang, contributor and analyst at China Talk. We also get into the lessons this story holds for other strategic industries like robotics and AI — plus a little detour into the Chinese podcasting ecosystem.
我们邀请到澳大利亚国立大学的冯明路教授参与讨论，他最近在*《中国学刊》上发表了一篇精彩论文，题为《中国电动汽车产业的崛起：地方政府与私人资本的战略联盟》*。一同参与的还有中国谈话（China Talk）的撰稿人兼分析师艾琳·张（Irene Zhang）。我们还探讨了这一故事对其他战略性行业（如机器人技术和人工智能）的启示——并顺便聊了聊中国的播客生态。
Our conversation covers:
我们的对话涵盖：
China’s automotive transformation
中国汽车产业的转型
from 130 small carmakers in the 1990s to the world’s most competitive EV industry.
从20世纪90年代的130家小型汽车制造商，到全球最具竞争力的电动汽车产业。
The rise of Chery, Geely, and other Chinese auto champions —
奇瑞、吉利及其他中国汽车领军企业的崛起——
how local connections, foreign technology, and creative financing helped them break into an industry dominated by state-owned enterprises.
地方人脉、外国技术和创造性融资如何帮助它们打入一个由国有企业主导的行业。
The downside of success —
成功的另一面——
how China’s EV boom created an overcapacity problem.
中国的电动汽车繁荣如何造成了产能过剩问题。
The role of guanxi and elite politics in deciding who gets to build cars.
“关系”与精英政治在决定谁能造车方面所扮演的角色。
When Chinese EVs go global —
当中国电动汽车走向全球——
record exports, overseas factories, trade tensions, and whether the same local-government playbook will shape the next wave of industries, from robotics to AI.
创纪录的出口、海外工厂、贸易紧张局势，以及同样的地方政府策略是否会塑造从机器人技术到人工智能的下一波产业浪潮。
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Local Beginnings of the Chinese Auto Industry
中国汽车工业的地方起源
Irene Zhang:
I had an amazing time reading your paper, and I found it incredibly interesting to learn the long history of how the global wave of Chinese EVs we’re seeing today actually came about. I’d like to start by hearing the story from your side. How did you and your co-author come up with the idea for this paper — how did you get interested in EVs as a research topic and decide to write it?
Irene Zhang：
我读您的论文时感到非常愉快，并且发现了解我们今天看到的中国电动汽车全球浪潮究竟是如何形成的这段漫长历史，极其有趣。我想先听听您这边的故事。您和您的合著者是如何想到写这篇论文的——您是如何对电动汽车这个研究课题产生兴趣并决定撰写它的？
Fengming Lu:
It’s connected to my own research agenda. I started doing research on EVs a few years ago, roughly during the final years of COVID. After that, I was mostly doing fieldwork, and I began writing papers and working on book projects last year.
Fengming Lu：
这与我自己的研究议程有关。几年前，大约在新冠疫情的最后几年，我开始研究电动汽车。之后，我主要在进行实地调研，去年开始写论文和书稿项目。
The original idea was to write some of the first papers for my EV research project. My co-author and I knew each other very well, and we’d come across several questions from senior scholars who study Chinese government and the Chinese economy. One of the first puzzles they raised was this: over the last ten or twenty years, especially after 2012, you see the rise of SOEs — state-owned enterprises — in many corners of the Chinese economy. But the automotive sector, or the EV sector, is an exception. It’s probably not the only one.
最初的构想是为我的电动汽车研究项目写一些早期的论文。我和我的合著者彼此非常熟悉，而且我们遇到过来自研究中国政府和中国经济的高级学者提出的几个问题。他们提出的第一个谜题是：在过去一二十年里，尤其是2012年之后，你会看到国有企业在中国经济的许多领域崛起。但汽车行业，或者说电动汽车行业，却是一个例外。它可能不是唯一的例外。
If you look at the tech sectors in China, most are dominated by private firms rather than SOEs. That’s a pretty interesting puzzle for anyone interested in China.
如果你看看中国的科技行业，大多数都是由私营企业而非国有企业主导。对于任何对中国感兴趣的人来说，这都是一个相当有趣的谜题。
My co-author and I thought it would be a good idea to start with a paper about this. He added some other cases from his own expertise, like pharmaceuticals and steel manufacturing, which also fit the pattern: the private sector, building on collaboration with Chinese local governments, excels at the expense of traditional, more established SOEs.
我和我的合著者认为，从一篇关于这个问题的论文开始会是个好主意。他还补充了一些他自己专业领域的案例，比如制药和钢铁制造，这些也符合这一模式：私营部门在与中国地方政府合作的基础上蓬勃发展，而传统、更成熟的国有企业则受到损害。
Jordan Schneider:
This was the most fascinating arc in your paper. On one hand we have Xi Jinping, the biggest SOE cheerleader we’ve had in a few premiers. Yet perhaps the most globally impressive, successful industrial leapfrogging has taken place in an industry where the SOEs were basically stuck, doing nothing.
Jordan Schneider：
这是您论文中最引人入胜的一条线索。一方面，我们有习近平，他是几任总理中最大的国有企业支持者。然而，或许全球最令人瞩目、最成功的产业跨越式发展，却发生在一个国有企业基本停滞不前、无所作为的行业。
And then two different development pathways were tried — partnering with foreign automakers, and building it themselves — and they were fine, but nothing all that impressive. Then all of a sudden, as you explore in this paper, you get this really interesting mix of private capital, entrepreneurs, local governments, and regional incentives, all dancing around whatever space the central government and the big SOE carmakers left open, creating the incredible flourishing we’ve seen over the past ten years.
然后，他们尝试了两种不同的发展路径——与外国汽车制造商合作，以及自己独立建设——这些路径都还不错，但并没有什么特别令人印象深刻的地方。然后突然之间，正如您在论文中所探讨的那样，私人资本、企业家、地方政府和区域激励措施形成了非常有趣的组合，它们都在中央政府和大国企汽车制造商留下的空间里周旋，创造了我们过去十年所看到的惊人繁荣。
Let’s do a bit of a timeline of the Chinese car industry. Why don’t you take us back to the ’90s? Where can we start to see the seeds of the EV boom in that period?
我们来梳理一下中国汽车产业的时间线吧。您能否带我们回到90年代？在那个时期，我们从哪里可以看到电动汽车繁荣的种子？
Fengming Lu:
Absolutely. And thank you, Jordan and Irene, because you really read my paper rather than just the abstract.
Fengming Lu：
当然可以。谢谢乔丹和艾琳，因为你们确实通读了我的论文，而不只是看了摘要。
Back in the ’90s, the Chinese automotive industry was in a very different shape from what it is now. If you’re talking about passenger vehicles — cars, SUVs, and so on — the market was only about half a million sold every year. It was much smaller, comparable to Poland back then, or Vietnam today.
回到90年代，中国汽车产业的形态与现在大不相同。如果你说的是乘用车——轿车、SUV等等——每年销量大约只有50万辆。市场规模要小得多，与当时的波兰或今天的越南相当。
For the Chinese government, the main concern was a legacy of the Maoist era and the economic decentralization of the 1980s: the automotive industry was super fragmented. As far as I remember, every province had its own carmaker except Tibet. All twenty-nine or thirty others had their own. By the mid-1990s, someone did the count and China had about 130 carmakers across the country — roughly the same number of carmakers you’d find at the peak of the EV boom, even though back then their combined output was tiny by comparison.
对于中国政府来说，主要担忧是毛泽东时代和20世纪80年代经济分权的遗留问题：汽车产业极度分散。据我所知，除了西藏，每个省都有自己的汽车制造商。其他二十九或三十个省都有。到90年代中期，有人统计过，中国全国大约有130家汽车制造商——与电动汽车热潮顶峰时期的汽车制造商数量大致相同，尽管那时它们的总产量相比之下微不足道。
Jordan Schneider:
What I thought was fascinating, Fengming, is that it actually made sense to have a local manufacturer in whatever corner of your province. You had these Maoist controls on who got which automobile, so if you wanted any cars in your region, you kind of had to make them yourself. On its face it seems absurd to have a company that makes 500 cars a year, but it may actually be economically productive if the difference is between having 500 cars or trucks versus having none at all.
Jordan Schneider：
Fengming，我觉得有趣的是，在省内任何一个角落拥有本地制造商实际上是有道理的。当时有毛泽东时代对谁能得到哪辆汽车的控制，所以如果你所在的地区想要任何汽车，你就得自己制造。表面上，一家年产500辆汽车的公司看起来很荒谬，但如果你面对的差别是拥有500辆汽车或卡车，还是一辆都没有，那么它实际上可能在经济上是有生产性的。
An ad for the Yemingzhu YMZ5010X (made in Chengdu), from the January 1992 issue of the Sichuan Automotive Journal. Source.
一则夜明珠YMZ5010X（成都制造）的广告，摘自1992年1月号的*《四川汽车》*。来源。
A 1992 brochure showing the YJ2020 made by Yanjing Auto (燕京汽车), based in Beijing. Source.
一本1992年的手册，展示了总部位于北京的燕京汽车制造的YJ2020。来源。
Fengming Lu:
To some extent, it’s similar to the British automotive sector, with all those countless brands and carmakers. What worried the Chinese government was a shock that began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when they started negotiating with European carmakers, especially Volkswagen. Volkswagen — and many others — basically told them that to make a carmaker efficient, you need to manufacture at least 150,000 cars a year. That’s the minimum economy of scale.
Fengming Lu：
在某种程度上，这与英国汽车行业相似，拥有无数品牌和制造商。让中国政府担忧的是始于20世纪70年代末和80年代初的冲击，当时他们开始与欧洲汽车制造商谈判，尤其是大众汽车。大众汽车——以及其他许多公司——基本上告诉他们，要让一家汽车制造商高效运转，你至少需要每年生产15万辆汽车。这是最低规模经济。
The Chinese government, the regulators, and the policymakers kept this magic number in mind: 150,000 cars a year. So they did some simple math, especially in the 1980s. The market was below one million, which meant it could only support four to six large-scale carmakers. Very simple math.
中国政府、监管机构和政策制定者牢牢记住了这个神奇的数字：每年15万辆汽车。所以他们做了一些简单的计算，尤其是在80年代。市场规模低于100万辆，这意味着它只能支撑四到六家大型汽车制造商。非常简单的数学。
That’s why, starting in the late 1980s, the Chinese government came up with a concept that’s very famous in the automotive sector: the “three bigs and three smalls” (三大三小). Back in the 1990s, those were the legitimate carmakers you could see on Chinese roads — though of course not the only ones. FAW (一汽) had a joint venture with Volkswagen. Dongfeng (东风), still known as the Second Automotive Works, had one with Citroën. Shanghai already had its joint venture with Volkswagen as well. There were smaller ones too, like Beijing Jeep (北京吉普) and Guangzhou Peugeot (广州标致). And Tianjin Xiali (天津夏利), which had a license from Daihatsu to make smaller Japanese cars.
这就是为什么从20世纪80年代末开始，中国政府提出了一个在汽车行业非常著名的概念：“三大三小”。在90年代，这些就是中国道路上合法的汽车制造商——当然不是唯一的。一汽与大众成立了合资企业。东风（当时仍被称为第二汽车制造厂）与雪铁龙成立了合资企业。上海也已经与大众成立了合资企业。还有一些较小的，比如北京吉普和广州标致。还有天津夏利，它获得了大发汽车的许可，生产小型日本汽车。
That wasn’t the only list, either. Later, some carmakers with defense or arms-manufacturing backgrounds — all state-owned, of course — somehow sneaked into the game too, like Chang’an . But it was still a very restrictive list. And elite politics played a role: many of those carmakers pulled various strings to get onto the list.
那也不是唯一的名单。后来，一些有国防或军工背景的汽车制造商——当然都是国有的——不知怎么地也混进了这个游戏，比如长安。但这仍然是一个非常限制性的名单。精英政治发挥了作用：许多汽车制造商通过各种关系挤进名单。
What you see in the 1990s is a set of approved carmakers in China, but plenty of other provinces and cities still wanted to get into the game. Back then, China hadn’t joined the WTO, so tariffs were very high. In the early 1990s, tariffs on cars ran around 150 to 200 percent, and later came down to somewhere between 80 and 120 percent. So for many local governments and firms, making cars was extremely profitable. An easier route, of course, was to smuggle cars — especially for places like Guangdong, Fujian, and, very interestingly, Shandong, Liaoning, and Jilin, because they were close to South Korea.
你在90年代看到的是中国有一批获得批准的汽车制造商，但其他许多省市仍然想进入这个游戏。那时，中国还没有加入世贸组织，所以关税非常高。在90年代初期，汽车关税大约在150%到200%之间，后来下降到80%到120%之间。因此，对许多地方政府和企业来说，造车极其有利可图。当然，更容易的途径是走私汽车——尤其是广东、福建，以及非常有趣的是山东、辽宁和吉林这些地方，因为它们靠近韩国。
But some other cities tried to figure out their own ways into automotive manufacturing. Several of the giant carmakers in China today trace their roots to the 1990s, when they started from very humble beginnings and were later either created by local governments or collaborated with them — companies like Geely (吉利), which today owns Volvo Cars and runs its own brands like Geely and Zeekr (极氪). And Chery (奇瑞). Chery is a very interesting company. They’re rising so quickly now in the European, British, and Australian markets, yet people outside China know so little about them — even people outside Anhui Province know so little.
但其他一些城市试图找到自己的方式进入汽车制造业。今天中国的几家大型汽车制造商都起源于90年代，它们从非常卑微的起点开始，后来要么由地方政府创建，要么与地方政府合作——比如吉利，如今拥有沃尔沃汽车，并运营着吉利和极氪等自有品牌。还有奇瑞。奇瑞是一家非常有趣的公司。它们现在在欧洲、英国和澳大利亚市场迅速崛起，但中国以外的人对它们知之甚少——甚至安徽省以外的人也知之甚少。
Jordan Schneider:
Great, let’s start with Chery, then. Why don’t you tell the origin story of how it grew starting in the ’90s?
Jordan Schneider：
太好了，那我们就从奇瑞开始吧。您能讲讲它在90年代是如何成长起来的起源故事吗？
Fengming Lu:
It’s such an interesting company. Originally, it was a state-owned enterprise — and it stayed one through the ’90s and most of the 2000s — but it wasn’t owned by any large city, large province, or the central government. It was the state-owned enterprise of a city called Wuhu (芜湖). Very few people have heard of Wuhu outside China, and even inside China not many have. It sits in the middle of Anhui Province, about 500 to 600 kilometers (~400 miles) from Shanghai.
Fengming Lu：
这是一家非常有趣的公司。最初，它是一家国有企业——并且在90年代和21世纪初的大部分时间里都是——但它不属于任何大城市、大省或中央政府。它是芜湖这座城市的国有企业。在中国以外很少有人听说过芜湖，即使在中国国内也不多。它位于安徽省中部，距离上海约500到600公里（约400英里）。
In the early 1990s, the city and the province weren’t in great shape. Anhui had been lagging behind its neighbors — Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and of course Shanghai — since the start of the reform era, in many ways. So they’d been looking for new industries to boost their economy.
在90年代初期，这座城市和省的情况并不太好。自改革开放以来，安徽在许多方面一直落后于其邻居——江苏、浙江，当然还有上海。所以他们一直在寻找新的产业来提振经济。
I went there for in-depth fieldwork, and combined with other materials I collected, I can reconstruct the story. In the early 1990s, Wuhu was searching for a new industry. They tried many things, and then they noticed a township-and-village enterprise in a village near the city. If I remember correctly, it had started collaborating with an arms maker in Henan Province — they’d somehow made a connection over there, found some engineers, and started building cars based on kit parts from South Korea. They were manufacturing on a very small scale: about 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 cars a year.
我去那里进行了深入的实地调研，结合我收集的其他材料，我可以还原这个故事。在90年代初期，芜湖在寻找一个新的产业。他们尝试了很多东西，然后他们注意到了城市附近一个村庄里的乡镇企业。如果我没记错的话，它