Beijing is beginning to reap the rewards of decades of deliberate industrial policy directed at accruing strategic resources plentiful across the Global South. This is the lesson of the remarkable news that, this year, China has surpassed Japan as the world’s largest exporter of automobiles.
Halfway through 2023, China has exported over 2.5 million cars, a 42.4 percent increase over last year. Electric vehicles (EVs) account for nearly 40 percent of these exports, according to Chinese customs data. Notably, a third of China’s auto exports were shipped to other Asian countries, especially developing nations to China’s south.
This is significant because for decades Southeast Asian nations have supplied China with the material inputs critical to Beijing’s world-class EV production today. Now they are becoming some of China’s top customers for the finished product.
Fidelity China Special Situations PLC (LON:FCSS), the UK’s largest China Investment Trust, capitalises on Fidelity’s extensive, locally-based analyst team to find attractive opportunities in a market too big to ignore.
