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Honda Motor began loading cars onto a ship here on Friday for export to Europe in China’s debut as a volume exporter of cars to the industrialized world.
The shipment follows DaimlerChrysler’s disclosure two months ago at the Shanghai Auto Show that it was negotiating to build a factory near Beijing to make small cars for export to North America. It comes at the end of a week when the Haier Group’s bid for Maytag and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s bid for Unocal have fed Western concerns about China’s rapid economic rise.
Automakers from around the globe, including General Motors, Ford Motor and Toyota Motor, are racing to build factories in China even as the rest of the world faces severe overcapacity in car manufacturing, raising the prospect that more factories may someday have to close in Western countries as Chinese exports grow.
China’s swift development has already alarmed leaders of the United Automobile Workers and other Western labor unions, who say their members cannot compete with workers earning $100 a month in coastal Chinese provinces and who would earn half that at auto factories being built in inland provinces.
Following a path already blazed by Korea and Japan, China has built a large auto industry with increasingly high quality over the last decade while protecting its home market behind steep trade barriers. China still imposes a tariff of close to 30 percent on imported family vehicles, compared with American tariffs of 2.5 percent on imported cars, minivans and sport utility vehicles and 25 percent on pickup trucks.
nytimes.com/2005/06/25/business/worldbusiness/25honda.html?ei=5090&en=e171d8a7e66d05c9&ex=1277352000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1119672685-z4Stk2bMxj4QLVjpXKXfaw
The shipment follows DaimlerChrysler’s disclosure two months ago at the Shanghai Auto Show that it was negotiating to build a factory near Beijing to make small cars for export to North America. It comes at the end of a week when the Haier Group’s bid for Maytag and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s bid for Unocal have fed Western concerns about China’s rapid economic rise.
Automakers from around the globe, including General Motors, Ford Motor and Toyota Motor, are racing to build factories in China even as the rest of the world faces severe overcapacity in car manufacturing, raising the prospect that more factories may someday have to close in Western countries as Chinese exports grow.
China’s swift development has already alarmed leaders of the United Automobile Workers and other Western labor unions, who say their members cannot compete with workers earning $100 a month in coastal Chinese provinces and who would earn half that at auto factories being built in inland provinces.
Following a path already blazed by Korea and Japan, China has built a large auto industry with increasingly high quality over the last decade while protecting its home market behind steep trade barriers. China still imposes a tariff of close to 30 percent on imported family vehicles, compared with American tariffs of 2.5 percent on imported cars, minivans and sport utility vehicles and 25 percent on pickup trucks.
nytimes.com/2005/06/25/business/worldbusiness/25honda.html?ei=5090&en=e171d8a7e66d05c9&ex=1277352000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1119672685-z4Stk2bMxj4QLVjpXKXfaw
