Exports measure scale. Globalization is ultimately measured by depth.
In 2025, China's automobile exports reached 7.098 million units, up 21.1% year on year, making China the world's largest vehicle exporter for the third consecutive year. Of that total, new energy vehicle exports reached 2.615 million units, up 103.7%. In 2026, China's auto exports have continued to accelerate and are expected to exceed 10 million units.
Ten years ago, we were still asking: When will Chinese automotive brands truly go global?
Today, that question seems to have an answer.
Chery exported 1.344 million vehicles in 2025, maintaining its position as China's No. 1 passenger-vehicle exporter among domestic brands for the 23rd consecutive year. BYD, which only began exporting passenger vehicles at scale three years ago, surpassed 1 million overseas sales for the first time. SAIC recorded 1.071 million overseas sales, with MG alone exceeding 300,000 units in Europe.
Measured by export volume, there is no doubt that China has moved to the center of the global automotive industry.
But recently, I have found myself asking a different question more and more often:Is selling vehicles around the world the same as truly becoming a global automotive company?
I do not think the two are entirely the same.
Seven million vehicles is unquestionably a major milestone in the globalization of China's automotive industry. It demonstrates the competitiveness of Chinese vehicles and the ability of China's automotive supply chain to serve global markets at scale.
But what it proves most clearly is the scale of globalization.
What will ultimately determine whether Chinese automakers can become long-term leaders in the global automotive industry is a different question:How deep is that globalization?
Exports measure scale. Globalization is ultimately measured by depth.
The 7 Million Vehicles Were Not Sold Into One Unified "Global Market"
We often talk about the "overseas market." But once companies truly expand beyond China, they quickly discover that there is no such thing as a single overseas market.
After reviewing the world's major automotive markets, Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute broadly groups them into three categories:
Around 26% are relatively open markets, including the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia;
Around 30% are conditionally open markets, including Europe and Canada;
And roughly 44% are difficult-entry markets, including the United States, Japan, South Korea, and India.
Yet even among relatively open markets, the business logic can be completely different.
Take Thailand as an example.
For decades, Thailand has been one of the most important overseas manufacturing bases for Japanese automakers. But the rapid rise of new energy vehicles created a new window of opportunity for Chinese companies to enter the market.
BYD initially introduced models such as the ATTO 3 into Thailand and quickly gained market traction. But it did not stop at vehicle exports. In July 2024, BYD officially began production at its Rayong plant in Thailand.
The facility has annual production capacity of approximately 150,000 vehicles and includes stamping, welding, painting, final assembly, as well as production of certain components. More importantly, it is not designed only to serve the Thai market—it also has an export function.
This means that what BYD is doing in Thailand has evolved from: "selling China-made vehicles to Thai consumers" to:"making Thailand part of its broader Southeast Asian manufacturing and operating system."
Europe follows a completely different logic.
SAIC's MG is a good example.
Image source: MG
MG's European sales first exceeded 50,000 units in 2021, surpassed 100,000 in 2022, crossed 200,000 in 2023, and exceeded 300,000 by 2025. But what deserves even more attention than the growth in sales is the shift in its product mix. In 2025, MG's Hybrid+ family sold 137,000 vehicles in Europe, up 300% year on year. By comparison, its battery-electric vehicle family sold around 46,000 units.
Why would a company from China, with strong capabilities in electric vehicles, significantly expand its hybrid portfolio instead?
Because once a company truly enters Europe, it realizes that consumers will not buy vehicles simply according to the technology pathway that dominates the Chinese market.
Charging infrastructure, tax policies, energy prices, and consumer preferences vary significantly across European countries.
Companies therefore have to rethink the fundamentals:
What do consumers here actually need?
Which powertrain is most suitable?
What price point is acceptable?
What kind of brand positioning can work?
True globalization therefore cannot mean: "Whatever I have in China, I sell to the rest of the world."
It has to become: "Whatever this market needs, I define and develop for this market."
The United States presents an even more different challenge.
There, the first question Chinese automakers may face is not whether their products are competitive enough, but whether they can overcome trade policy, industrial policy, data-security requirements, and market-access barriers.
The same Chinese vehicle faces entirely different business environments in Thailand, Germany, Brazil, and the United States.
This is why I keep emphasizing one point: The world is vast—and profoundly different.
True globalization is not about replicating the same China playbook across 100 countries. It is about entering very different markets and still being able to build competitive capabilities that fit each local environment.
The Way Chinese Automakers Go Global Is Already Changing
Over the past decade or more, the most visible feature of China's automotive globalization has been the continuous growth of exports.
Today, however, something else deserves even more attention: The way Chinese automakers are going global is changing.
The First Shift: From Exporting a Single Model to Building a Full Product Portfolio
The logic of early-stage exports was relatively simple. Find a model with competitive costs and a reasonable fit for the local market, identify a distributor, and start selling.
Today, that approach is becoming increasingly difficult.
MG's expansion in Europe from battery-electric vehicles into its Hybrid+ portfolio is a good example. BYD is following a similar path. In its early entry into Europe, models such as the ATTO 3, DOLPHIN, and SEAL were among its best-known products, all of them battery-electric. As the European market evolves, BYD has continued to broaden its plug-in hybrid portfolio as well.
Chery, meanwhile, is entering different countries and market segments through a multi-brand, multi-product strategy built around CHERY, OMODA, JAECOO, and other brands.
Image source: JAECOO
The underlying shift is highly significant: From "selling what we already have" to "developing what the market actually needs." At this point, globalization is no longer simply about export capability. It becomes a question of product-definition capability.
The Second Shift: From Automakers Going Global to Entire Industrial Clusters Going Global
It is no longer just the vehicle manufacturer that is going overseas.
Once companies such as BYD, Chery, Great Wall Motor, and Changan begin reaching meaningful scale in overseas markets, the questions quickly change from "Where will the cars be sold?" to:
Where will the batteries come from?
Where will electric drive systems come from?
Where will seats, thermal-management systems, body components, chassis systems, and electrical and electronic systems be sourced?
Should components continue to be shipped from China, or should they be sourced locally?
Should Chinese suppliers expand overseas alongside the OEMs?
As a result, the globalization of automakers is beginning to drive the globalization of the supply chain.
What we increasingly see today in Hungary, Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil is not a single Chinese automaker entering a market alone. Instead, new supplier networks are gradually forming around localized vehicle production.
This means that while the previous stage was largely about Chinese automotive brands going global, the next stage will increasingly be about the globalization of China's entire automotive value chain.
The Third Shift: From Selling Products to Operating an Ecosystem
This is, in my view, the most important shift.
A car is not a product whose commercial relationship ends the moment it is sold.
After a vehicle is delivered to the customer, there is still aftersales service, spare parts, financing, insurance, charging, OTA updates, used-car operations, and residual-value management.
As a company becomes more deeply rooted in a market, additional layers emerge: manufacturing, supply chains, R&D, talent development, university partnerships, technology cooperation, and even capital partnerships and M&A.
In other words:The basic unit of global competition for Chinese automakers is shifting from "a vehicle" to "an entire set of industrial capabilities."
Different Companies Are Already Following Very Different Globalization Paths
This is also what makes the globalization of China's automotive industry particularly interesting today.
There is no single standard answer.
Chery represents one model.
In 2025, Chery exported 1.344 million vehicles and was present in more than 100 countries and regions. It was among the earliest Chinese automakers to explore international markets. From complete-vehicle exports, to KD assembly, overseas distribution networks, and now expansion into mature automotive markets such as Europe, Chery has followed a highly recognizable pathway:Exports → Distribution → Manufacturing → Local Operations
BYD represents another model.
In 2025, BYD's overseas sales exceeded 1 million units for the first time. In the first half of 2026 alone, overseas sales surpassed 780,000 units. But BYD is now doing far more than simply selling vehicles. In Thailand, it operates a vehicle plant with annual production capacity of 150,000 units. In Brazil, it is establishing localized manufacturing capabilities. In Hungary, it is building its European passenger-vehicle production base. Even more notably, in 2025 BYD announced that it would locate its European headquarters and a new European R&D center in Budapest.
Image source: BYD
This means its European footprint is evolving from sales, to local manufacturing, and then further into regional management and regional R&D.
Why does an automaker that already has a factory in Europe still need to add a headquarters, R&D capabilities, and university partnerships?
Because truly operating in Europe requires far more than a factory. It requires local talent, local product-definition capabilities, local management capabilities, and the long-term ability to manage relationships with governments, employees, suppliers, customers, and society at large.
Leapmotor represents a third path.
It chose not to build everything itself. In 2023, Stellantis invested in Leapmotor, and the two companies established Leapmotor International. Stellantis holds a 51% stake and Leapmotor 49%, with the joint venture responsible for sales and manufacturing outside Greater China. By 2025, Leapmotor had shipped more than 40,000 vehicles to Europe through this system. By 2026, its European sales and service network had expanded to more than 850 locations.
For a Chinese EV startup with almost no previous distribution footprint in Europe, how much time and capital would it have taken to build 850 sales and service outlets entirely on its own?
Leapmotor chose a different answer:Leverage the resources already built by an established global automotive group.
This offers an important lesson: Globalization does not necessarily mean owning every overseas asset yourself. What matters more is: Can you effectively mobilize global resources?
That is why, in the future, we may no longer be able to judge how global a Chinese automaker has become simply by comparing who exports the most vehicles, who owns the most overseas factories, or who has entered the largest number of countries.
Chery, BYD, SAIC, Geely, and Leapmotor are already taking fundamentally different paths.
China's Auto Industry Is Going Through Three Globalization Leaps
If we look at these companies together, I believe China's automotive globalization is going through three distinct leaps.
The First Leap: From Made in China to Sold Globally
At this stage, the key questions are straightforward: Can products go overseas? Will consumers buy them?
Can distribution channels be established? Can aftersales service keep up?
China's 7.098 million vehicle exports in 2025 marked a major milestone in this first stage. Chinese vehicles have now undergone large-scale validation across global markets.
But there is an important statistical distinction to keep in mind.
The 7.098 million figure refers to total vehicle exports from China. It is not exactly the same as overseas sales by Chinese brands, because it also includes vehicles produced in China and exported by foreign and joint-venture automakers.
As China moves into the next stage of globalization, the way we measure progress therefore also needs to evolve—from simply asking "How many vehicles were exported?" to asking "How much business are Chinese automakers actually operating overseas?"
The Second Leap: From Made in China to Made Globally
This shift is now happening rapidly.
Thailand, Brazil, Hungary, Spain, Mexico, the Middle East, Central Asia—more and more Chinese automakers are taking manufacturing capabilities overseas.
But I will not go into detail here, because overseas manufacturing itself takes many different forms: SKD, CKD, contract manufacturing, joint-venture production, the use of partners' existing supply chains, and deeper localization extending from vehicle assembly into the broader supplier ecosystem.
Producing overseas and being truly localized are still not the same thing.
The Third Leap: Operating Globally
This is by far the most difficult step.
At this stage, the questions companies must solve become fundamentally different.
In Europe, how do you manage regulation, environmental requirements, labor unions, data governance, and political cycles?
In Thailand, how do you establish a local supply chain while competing with Japanese automotive ecosystems that have been deeply rooted there for decades?
In Brazil, how do you manage taxation, exchange-rate volatility, financing, and localized production?
In the Middle East, how do you move beyond product value-for-money and build real brand premium?
And when a country goes through a change of government and the policy environment shifts, can the company still operate normally and sustainably?
Once these questions emerge, globalization is no longer simply a sales issue.
It becomes a genuine business-management challenge.
That is why I believe the next goal for China's automotive industry should not simply be Going Global.
More importantly, it should be: Being Global.
After 7 Million Vehicles, We May Need a New Way to Measure Globalization
Over the past few years, we have become accustomed to looking at export rankings among Chinese automakers:
Who ranks first?
Who is growing the fastest?
Which country has newly entered the Top 10?
These figures still matter. But as China's automotive industry moves into the next stage of globalization, exports alone are no longer enough.
We may also need to start asking:
Are overseas sales sustainable?
Can overseas operations generate profits?
Are products being defined specifically for local markets?
Is there a genuinely local management team?
Has the supply chain taken root locally?
Does the company have local R&D capabilities?
Can the brand command a premium?
And when the policy environment changes, can the company continue operating successfully?
Ultimately, all of these questions point to one concept: Globalization Depth.
So, returning to the question at the beginning: Has China's automotive industry truly gone global after selling 7 million vehicles overseas?
My answer is: China's auto industry has already achieved a breakthrough in the scale of globalization. But the real work of building globalization depth has only just begun.
Over the past decade, the main challenge was whether these capabilities existed at all: Did Chinese automakers have overseas sales? Overseas distribution channels? Overseas factories?
Over the next decade, the competition will increasingly be about how deep those capabilities go:
How deep are the distribution channels?
How deeply are products defined for local markets?
How localized is manufacturing?
How deeply embedded is the supply chain?
How strong is local R&D?
How deeply rooted is the brand?
How globalized is the organization?
Ultimately, what determines whether a company can become a truly global enterprise is not how many countries it has entered, nor simply how many vehicles it sells overseas.
It is whether the company can operate sustainably and profitably across different markets over the long term—and withstand different economic and political cycles.
So: Exports measure scale. Globalization measures depth.
According to Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute, Chinese automakers had approximately 3.44 million units of planned annual overseas production capacity in 2023. That figure increased to around 3.96 million in 2024 and 5.26 million in 2025.
By 2026, it has already approached 6.85 million units.
In other words:The first 7 million represents vehicles made in China and sold globally. The second nearly 7 million represents Chinese automakers beginning to manufacture globally.
Why have Chinese automakers suddenly begun moving manufacturing capacity overseas on such a large scale in just a few years? And of those 6.85 million units of planned capacity, how much is truly localized?
In the next edition of Tina's Talk, we will take a closer look at: "The Overseas Factory Boom: China's Auto Industry's Second 7 Million."
