Behind the 38% Year-on-Year Growth Overseas, Changan's "Methodology" for Going Global Deserves More Attention

Recently, major automakers successively released May sales data. It is not difficult to find that overseas sales are gradually becoming a new growth engine for Chinese automakers.

Among them, Changan Automobile's performance was particularly outstanding. In May, the group's total sales reached 209,100 units, with overseas sales reaching 70,700 units, a year-on-year increase of 38%, accounting for 33.8% of total sales. This means that, on average, one out of every three cars sold reaches the overseas market.

It is worth mentioning that on May 28, Qiyuan Q05 (NEVO Q05) was launched in Thailand, with orders breaking 3,000 units in just three days. By aggregating monthly sales from January to May, Changan Automobile's cumulative overseas sales for the first five months of 2026 were approximately 356,000 units, achieving 47.5% of the annual overseas sales target of 750,000 units. Under the current growth trend, achieving the annual target is almost inevitable, and going global has already become the key path for Changan to create a second growth curve.

Against the backdrop of intensifying geopolitical uncertainties and continuous upgrades in industry competition, compared to the striking sales growth rate, the underlying logic behind the growth deserves more attention. The 38% year-on-year growth overseas is not from a single-point breakthrough in one market, but the result of multiple regional markets working together and the continuous release of overall momentum. One can say that Changan is upgrading its overseas expansion from "going out" to "going in", and then to "taking root", gradually exploring a sustainable development path from "Changan China" to "World Changan".

Behind all of this is the advance planning and long-term investment at the strategic level. Changan has always adhered to the concept of "No Changan without overseas presence, no overseas base without overseas commitment". At the Beijing Auto Show, Changan Automobile officially released the "Inclusive" Plan 2.0, marking its globalization strategy from "product export" to a comprehensive upgrade to "industrial going global". Based on this plan, Changan adheres to the four principles of "Long-term, Localized, Systematic, and Integrated ESG Construction", continuing to deepen the "152" global market layout, shifting globalization development from product trade-led to a full-business comprehensive model covering manufacturing, trade, investment, service, and ESG construction. The goal has surpassed simple export sales figures and points towards deeper localized operations and systematic going global capabilities.

In recent years, this path has gradually materialized. In 2025, Changan's total exports reached 637,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 18.9%. Currently, Changan's global sales network has expanded from 63 countries in 2020 to 118 countries and regions, with cumulative overseas sales outlets reaching 1,124. Moreover, Changan has cumulatively built 22 global manufacturing bases, with overseas capacity reaching 350,000 units, having already moved towards the stage of systematic deep cultivation of the going global system.

What deserves more attention is that Changan is not simply selling products to overseas markets, but gradually forming a localized operation logic adapting to local conditions in the globalization process. Aiming at the industrial base, consumption habits, energy structure, and market maturity of different regions, Changan is exploring differentiated development paths and building its own regional momentum in the global market.

In the Southeast Asian market, Changan chose to open a new situation through industrial chain layout. Last May, Changan Automobile's first overseas new energy vehicle factory—the Rayong Factory in Thailand officially went into production, providing manufacturing support for the three brands of Changan, Deepal, and Avatr. The supporting Thailand spare parts warehouse currently under construction will also further improve the local service system. As capacity, supply chain, and service networks gradually land, Southeast Asia is becoming an important pivot for Changan's new energy vehicle global layout.

In Europe, a value hub of the global automotive industry, Changan focuses on brand building and value enhancement. From January to April 2026, Changan exported 10,672 units to Europe, a year-on-year increase of 629.5%. At the same time, Changan signed to become the global official partner of the Portugal national team in May, continuously enhancing brand awareness through sports marketing and localized communication. For Changan Automobile, the significance of the European market has never been just sales growth, but an important touchstone for global brand value and market recognition.

In the Latin American market, Changan promoted deep localization around the local energy structure and usage scenarios. This March, Changan Automobile's Brazil factory officially went into production. The first phase plans to produce fuel, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid models, and all series are equipped with flexible fuel engines, compatible with gasoline, alcohol, and mixed fuel in any proportion, fully adapting to the important market characteristics of Brazil which is dominated by ethanol fuel. This is not only the landing of capacity but also an important step for Changan to achieve localized operations and long-term roots in the Latin American market.

In the Middle East and African market, Changan relies on long-term accumulation to continuously release growth potential. After more than thirty years of deep cultivation, Changan has established a stable channel system and brand foundation. In 2025, the Egypt team's annual sales grew by 328% year-on-year. The market share of the fourth-generation CS55 PLUS CKD products jumped to first in the sub-market. The Changan brand sales entered the top five in local world brands and top three in local Chinese brands, demonstrating the value returns brought by long-termist layout.

At the same time, Changan continues to improve its new market layout, promoting Avatr to land in Uzbekistan, implementing localized production of star models in Kazakhstan, promoting the Deepal series into Côte d'Ivoire and radiating to the West African market, and carrying out systematic training on G318 and new energy technologies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. These measures not only accelerated Changan's penetration speed in new markets but are also gradually forming a localized operation network where technology, brand, and service support each other, providing solid regional support for globalization development.

From Southeast Asian manufacturing bases to European brand building; from Latin American energy adaptation to Middle East and African long-term cultivation, Changan is using the practice of different markets and different paths to prove that true globalization is not simply copying successful experiences, but building long-term competitiveness based on understanding and integrating locally. As more and more regional markets begin to form synergies, a globalization system covering R&D, manufacturing, brand, channels, and services is also becoming Changan's new growth flywheel.

Behind the continuous release of regional market momentum, essentially, it cannot be separated from the long-term support of technology, talent, and organizational capabilities. For Changan, globalization competition is no longer just competition in products and sales, but competition in systemic capabilities. In response, Changan is accelerating the systematic layout of scale and globalization. On one hand, building a "Six Nations, Ten Locations" global R&D layout, having built over 200 laboratories in 16 major technical fields, and creating the industry's only "National Key Laboratory of Intelligent Vehicle Safety Technology", providing continuous support for technical depth; On the other hand, according to plans, in the next three years, the overseas team of Changan Automobile will achieve order-of-magnitude growth and high-quality breakthroughs. Overseas employees will exceed 4,600, the proportion of localized employees will exceed 70%, driving the total employment scale of the upstream and downstream industry chain to break 15,000, truly becoming the core power rooted locally, integrating locally, and serving locally.

In addition, Changan Automobile also proposed to strive to break through 200 billion yuan in brand value by 2030, join the Fortune Global 500, unswervingly create high-end brands, and achieve a leap "Towards Innovation and Progress". The proposal of this goal not only means achieving a simultaneous leap in scale and brand but also further points to reshaping the Chinese brand value benchmark in global competition.

It can be seen that Changan Automobile's going global is no longer just a story of sales growth, but represents a new logic of globalization development, moving from scale expansion to value enhancement, from market exploration to system output, from product going global to industrial going global, and from "Chinese Intelligent Manufacturing" to "Global Operations". It can be foreseen that a more global, more internationally competitive "World Changan" is accelerating towards us.