We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.
[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...
They also had a 22% decrease in sales domestically YoY this past year. The only thing keeping a bunch of those brands around is state sponsorship.
Indeed. It's a smart strategy by the CCP, a brand battle royale until only the strongest survive. Given the way things have happened in the past though, I suspect what we'll see is Geely and Chery buying out the ones that fail until there's just those two giants and a few niche players who'll likely be domestic market only.
It makes sense if they let them fail, but note the system is not that the ccp broadly backs them. Each state backs their own set, and if they fail that state loses the jobs/favtories/etc. so there is a lot of friction for letting them fail.
Ah interesting, thanks for the extra context.