Last year’s numbers for China’s electric vehicle industry tell the story: production rose 10 percent and revenues 7 percent, but profit margins fell to their lowest level in a decade. Production incentives lock original equipment manufacturers into a destructive cycle of hypercompetition called “involution” in which they impose even more crushing payment terms on their suppliers. Driven to overproduce beyond what Chinese consumers can buy, they dump excess output in foreign markets where they at least have some hope of making the profits they need to gain an edge on domestic competitors and keep factories humming to please Chinese Communist Party overseers. Add a significantly undervalued yuan that makes their cars artificially cheap in dollar terms, and you have an incubator for global manufacturing titans like battery maker CATL.

...

By all means, follow the money. Just understand that with Chinese EVs, it leads to a dead end for Canadian automotive manufacturing and could ultimately trigger a slow death spiral for much of Canadian industry. All too often, I hear Canadians saying we have no choice now. What they really mean is that the easy path is blocked, and they don’t like the harder road. But that’s the one that leads to longer-term prosperity and sovereignty through developing our own supply chains and ecosystems.

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[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The walrus should be asked to name a Canadian auto company. Like what car do I buy, to support a Canadian-head quartered auto company. It's USA car companies, with Canadian outposts, where Canadians work making US car companies money. The USA doesn't want to let us build their cars anymore anyhow.

So who cares if Chinese car companies want to take over as the outpost owners. Chinese car companies are talking about building cars in Canada, likely with more automation involved, granted. But the auto industry has already said they can't compete with their old approach anyhow. So ANY company that wants to build viable cars in Canada, will likely need to automate / robo-size their factories.

Is it a Risk? Sure. But while we can point at Chinese car companies as a POTENTIAL threat to Canadian sovereignty, US car companies are a vulnerability that the USA is ACTIVELY EXPLOITING to undermine Canadian sovereignty. It's like seeing someone who's getting raped, and telling them not to try and flee out the building/fight back, because "You never know, might be another rapist outside!". Stupid fucking media.

[–] Scotty@scribe.disroot.org 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

@wampus@lemmy.ca

As this and many other reports (as well as China's history) clearly show, China's threat isn't "potential." The Chinese government is actively undermining its 'partners' across the globe, and Canada is no exemption.

China is also a decisive supporter of Russia in its war against Ukraine, another sign of China's hostility against Western democracies.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Still not on par with the USA running influence campaigns and using a plant in the Alberta government to try and literally break apart the country. Still not on par with openly declaring economic warfare against us, and upending trade agreements/standards based on totally bullshit 'reasons' like "fentanyl!".

The USA is openly hostile to western democracies. The USA overtly supports Russian puppet candidates in European elections. The USA props up far right xenophobic fascist politicians. The USA's biggest corporation leaders do Nazi salutes on international stages, and speak at far-right rallies, and publish techno-fascist manifestos. The USA's VP literally goes to other countries to speak at far-right campaign rallies. The USA doesn't support Ukraine in the Ukraine / Russia conflict, and tends to push peace terms that explicitly benefit Russia. The USA insults Ukraine regularly, disrupts shipments, and has been at best a tepid supporter via arms sales. The USA's director of national intelligence used Russian propaganda, inventing cities and claiming they had biolabs which didn't exist, in releases even within the last month.

I'm not saying China's free from risk. Sure, there's risk in doing business with any global hegemon. But at present, the USA represents a greater risk to Canada than China, in part because our stuff had become so integrated, prior to the USA going rogue. Like Risk is usually defined as the impact of an event multiplied by the chance of that event occurring on an annual basis. Chinese EVs have a far smaller impact/likelihood, than Trump walking away from CUSMA / applying tariffs across the board to Canadian goods. Which is a greater risk, that China may build infrastructure in Canada to start surveilling Canadians more via EVs, or that the USA is already surveilling Canadians via our dependence on Google / US tech companies who are actively exploiting our lack of privacy to fuel AI -- one case is a "maybe this will occur", the other is "this is already occurring on a routine basis"; so one is super frequent, and impacts like 99% of Canadians.... while the other is mostly theoretical. The USA is, without a doubt, objectively the bigger risk/threat.