Original Liu Xiaobo
Recently, with Chongqing and Guangzhou respectively announcing the automobile production from January to May, China's first automobile city has changed suddenly:
Chongqing is on top, Guangzhou is down!
From January to May this year, Chongqing's automobile production increased by 15.7% year-on-year to 997,000 units, while Guangzhou's automobile production fell by 19.9% to 947,300 units.
Chongqing's automobile production will surpass Shanghai in 2023, and this year it will surpass Guangzhou, and the growth momentum is not insignificant.
This reminds people of the increasingly stalemate Guangzhou and Chongqing's "battle for the fourth city of GDP", and the new changes in the first city of automobiles have made Chongqing's challenge to Guangzhou more confident.
Automobile is the largest "tradable" industry in China, with a total annual output value of more than 11 trillion yuan. Although the scale of real estate is still larger than that of a car, houses are not tradable and can only be sold locally.
In urban competition, the automobile is the first industry, which is used to harvest others (real estate is to harvest itself). The importance of the automobile industry is enough to change the fortunes of the city and the country.
In 1953, the First Automobile Factory was established in Changchun, which directly led to Changchun becoming a municipality directly under the central government.
Previously, Shenyang, Anshan, Fushun, Benxi, Dalian (then called Luda), and Harbin were already municipalities directly under the central government, only Changchun was not. With the blessing of the automobile industry, Changchun's status has risen sharply. It was only later that due to the national strategic adjustment, 11 municipalities directly under the central government, including Changchun, were downgraded to provincial municipalities, ending the era of municipalities directly under the central government in the northeast region.
Erqi was born in 1969, at a time when Sino-Soviet friction intensified, so it was built in Shiyan, Hubei Province, which was built in the "third-tier area", which played an important role in the rise of this small city and the economic development of Hubei later.
Around the year 2000, automobiles accelerated into Chinese households, and the auto industry played an increasingly significant role in driving the economy. The introduction of overseas brands, the establishment of joint ventures in various places, state-owned enterprises, private enterprises have also entered this field, a number of emerging automobile cities have risen, such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenyang, Xi'an, etc.
It is estimated that many people no longer remember, even Beijing once became the first city of Chinese automobiles. In 2009, Beijing took the lead in producing more than 1 million cars annually with BAIC Hyundai, Beiqi Foton, BAIC Benz, etc.
Shanghai then rose to the throne of "No. 1 Automobile City" from 2010 to 2014, and major car companies include the well-known Shanghai Volkswagen, Shanghai General Motors, Shanghai GM-Wuling, etc. In recent years, the growth of Shanghai's auto industry has mainly relied on Tesla.
Shanghai's status as China's No. 1 automobile city was terminated by Chongqing in 2015. Chongqing's car companies are a hodgepodge of central enterprises, foreign capital and private enterprises, including Changan Automobile, Changan Ford, Qingling Automobile, Lifan Automobile, and Cialis, which has become popular in the past two years.
Chongqing was soon ousted by Guangzhou, which from 2019 to 2023 became China's number one automobile city, with an annual output of more than 3 million vehicles, accounting for a quarter of the local manufacturing industry.
Guangzhou is mainly supported by Japanese joint ventures, including GAC Honda, GAC Toyota, Dongfeng Nissan, etc.
In recent years, there have been major changes in the automotive industry: a new generation of cars has arrived, and the underlying logic has changed!
The new generation of automobiles refers to "new energy + intelligence". New energy is the first wave of change, and intelligence is the second wave of change.
In the first wave of change, strong government support is very important, such as the construction of charging piles, and tax and fee reductions for new energy vehicles. In this round of competition, China has done the best, so new energy vehicles have risen rapidly in China, giving birth to BYD, the world's largest new energy vehicle company, as well as a large number of brands such as Ideal, Xiaomi, and Aion.
The second wave of change is intelligence, which is an IT company that has never been engaged in automobiles before, and the biggest representative of this field is Huawei.
And BYD and Huawei are headquartered in Shenzhen.
The chart above shows the top 10 cities in China in terms of new energy vehicle production in 2023. Shenzhen jumped to the first place.
Shenzhen has historically lacked automotive genes. Due to the small land area, there is a lack of trump cards in the fight for car companies to settle down, and the only two opportunities - Fengshen Automobile and Dongfeng Renault are also missing out on Shenzhen.
When Shenzhen thought that it had nothing to do with the car, the gears of fate turned surprisingly and favored Shenzhen, so that Shenzhen not only gave birth to BYD, but also Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing.
These two companies have not only changed the pattern of Shenzhen, but also the pattern of the national automotive industry and the fate of a number of cities.
For example, Xi'an, due to the blessing of BYD, once became the first city of new energy vehicles in China. Although we have lost the first place now, we will continue to maintain our important position.
In addition, BYD also has gigafactories in Zhengzhou, Changsha, Hefei, Changzhou and other cities.
Huawei does not produce its own vehicles, but mainly produces the "nervous system" of smart cars, and among the main partners selected by Huawei are Changan Automobile and Celis headquartered in Chongqing.
Therefore, Chongqing is the biggest beneficiary of Huawei's automotive technology. We can even say that Chongqing defeated Guangzhou to return to the first automobile city, and Huawei contributed a lot.
The picture above is a screenshot of the official website of the Chongqing Bureau of Statistics, and it can be seen that the main driver of this wave of growth in Chongqing's automotive industry is the cooperation between Cialis and Huawei. The scale of Changan Automobile's cooperation with Huawei seems to be larger, involving a high proportion of equity in platform companies, and there may be more room for imagination.
So the question is: Huawei is a Guangdong company, why did it not give priority to Guangzhou's automotive industry, but Chongqing?
This may be closely related to the different structures of car companies in Chongqing and Guangzhou.
Guangzhou car companies are mainly joint venture car manufacturers, mainly Japanese cars, and it is difficult for Huawei to cooperate with them. Japan is clearly standing with the United States in pursuing Huawei.
There are many car companies in Chongqing, including central enterprises (such as Changan Automobile) and private enterprises (such as Cialis), and these companies are more active in cooperating with Huawei, and there are no obstacles. Therefore, among the brands that Huawei has prioritized, Chongqing accounts for the highest proportion.
Compare the four giants of China's automotive industry – Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen – and you will find an interesting phenomenon:
Guangzhou and Shanghai became automobile cities, mainly relying on joint ventures, Guangzhou is dominated by Japanese manufacturers, and Shanghai is dominated by American manufacturers. With the change of the underlying logic of the automobile industry and the rise of Chinese cars, Guangzhou and Shanghai have encountered growth bottlenecks.
The chart below shows the output of Guangzhou's major industrial products from January to May, with the output of automobiles falling by 19.9%, which dragged down Guangzhou's industrial added value from January to May by only 0.7%.
Shanghai's automobile production fell by 11.9% from January to May (chart below), which, combined with the general decline in other products, drove Shanghai's total industrial output above designated size to fall by 0.7% from January to May, including a 4.9% decline in May.
In the same period, automobile production in Chongqing and Shenzhen increased by 15.7% and 163.5%, respectively. The two cities grew by 9.1% (Chongqing) and 12.3% (Shenzhen) respectively, and are clearly on the same page as Guangzhou and Shanghai.
The rise of China's automotive industry is a major historical event that will change the global industrial landscape. Chinese automobiles will compete all over the world, just like Japanese and German cars back then. The dividends it brings to the producing cities will be unprecedented.
The following chart shows the industrial revenue above designated size in the top 10 cities in 2023.
Shenzhen's position as the first industrial city is being consolidated; With the rise of the automobile industry, Chongqing is expected to catch up with Beijing and Foshan in the next few years and hit the position of the fourth industrial city.
The battle for the fourth city of GDP between Chongqing and Guangzhou will also continue in the coming years.
The battle for cars between major cities has just begun.
In the past, everyone was competing for the domestic ranking, and in the future, they are competing for the world ranking. Artificial intelligence + new energy will define the car as a new, Internet celebrity-level electronic consumer product.