For China, the electric vehicle is not only a question of trade and industry. It is above all a question of national pride. The government’s rhetoric of technological overtaking of the West serves, in fact, the stability of the regime, explaining the implementation of measures whose economic cost can sometimes seem exorbitant. Alongside other industrial technologies such as 5G or Artificial Intelligence, the development of electric vehicles is thus a perfect illustration of the Chinese strategy mixing protectionism, massive subsidies and exports.
From the 1980s onwards, China, a newcomer to car racing, was very behind in terms of technology. To attract foreign investment, it opted for the strategy of “exchanging the free market for technology”, by limiting the shares that foreign investors could take to 50%. However, the technological lag was still too great. The country, marked by its nationalist ideology and its ambition to become an industrial power, then sought to “overtake in the bend”. Miao Wei, Chinese Minister of Industry between 2010 and 2020, theorized upon taking office that the era of electric vehicles represented an opportunity for China, because it was on the same starting line as other countries.
