Gasgoo Munich- On Oct. 23, speaking at the 14th Automobile & Environment Innovation Forum and the 8th Gasgoo Awards ceremony "China Solutions, Global Value", Soh Weiming, chairman and CEO of Renault Group China, revealed that the automaker has vetted more than 400 Chinese companies over the past four years. The goal: to deepen global cooperation with Chinese auto parts suppliers.
Soh said Renault is studying how to integrate Chinese Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers into its global ecosystem. He noted that the company has identified roughly 15 areas for collaboration and aims to forge deeper ties with a group of top-tier Chinese suppliers.
Unlike traditional parts procurement, supplier internationalization cannot stop at simply exporting products, Soh emphasized. It must also encompass R&D, intellectual property arrangements, and the integration of local industrial resources.
In his view, exporting complete vehicles is not the whole answer to automotive globalization. Looking ahead, exporting knocked-down kits, exporting R&D capabilities, and reconfiguring supply chains across different regions will all become critical issues.
However, he noted that this cooperation model is still a work in progress. Chinese suppliers expanding abroad must adapt to local financial, banking, and settlement systems to truly integrate into regional industrial ecosystems.
In recent years, Renault has consistently strengthened its ties with the Chinese automotive supply chain. Previously, it participated in global model development through its Advanced China R&D Center (ACDC) and brought Chinese suppliers into projects like the Twingo.
The sheer scale of this due diligence underscores Renault's concrete efforts to expand its Chinese supply chain partnerships. For Chinese parts makers, opportunities to enter the global systems of multinational automakers are growing—though cooperation is no longer limited to simply supplying components.
