BYD’s Vice President on the Price of Global Success

In Europe, policymakers talk about stopping BYD to protect their legacy automakers. Do you think that those tactics have merit or are they driven by political concerns?

This is mainly triggered by political concerns. Because thinking about BYD or [other foreign] manufacturing in the region, we will hire local people. Then what’s the difference? Sometimes when the revolution comes, people need a little time to digest. For us, we are a global company. We need to also make ourselves very strong [by hiring] local people.

One argument is that the whole of China’s car industry was built on joint ventures, with Volkswagen and Audi and all these companies forced to partner with local firms to do business in China, which helped build up the domestic auto industry. Does it not make sense to reciprocate with joint ventures overseas?

It’s a very different moment now, because when all those foreign companies came to China, the whole auto industry was weak. But China did open up for all the foreign brands to make tons of money over the past 20 years. They banked the profit from China. So now if we do a joint venture, can we make the same profit that they did in China? No, it’s impossible. So it’s a different moment because now the whole society, industry, has grown to be more open, to be a really consumer-driven, competitive market.