[In-depth Report] System Symbiosis: Foreign Capital Empowers New Path for Chinese Automotive Going Global

On the morning of July 23, as one of the core sub-forums of the "2026 China Auto Forum", the themed forum "Foreign Multinational Enterprises Empowering the Going Global of the Chinese Local Automotive Industry" was held in Shanghai Jiading. This forum was hosted by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, co-organized by the Intelligent Manufacturing Branch of the Shanghai Chamber of Foreign Investment and the Jiading District Foreign-invested Enterprise Association. Focusing on key propositions in the process of international development of the automotive industry, it set up four discussion directions: breaking market barriers overseas, diverse empowerment models of foreign capital, practice of industrial ecosystem landing, and paths for supply chain collaborative going global. It attracted nearly 130 guests from domestic and foreign capital vehicle and parts enterprises, industry institutions, and mainstream media.

Chen Ye, Party Secretary and Director of the Shanghai Jiading District Commerce Commission, Shao Gang, Deputy Party Secretary and Town Mayor of Anting Town, Shanghai Jiading District, Huang Feng, President of the Shanghai Chamber of Foreign Investment, Wei Wenqing, Executive Deputy Secretary-General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, and other government and industry leaders attended the forum. Executives and representatives from domestic and foreign enterprises and institutions, including Yang Xiaoming, President of Aptiv China and Asia Pacific, Gao Gang, Vice President, Global Chief Legal Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer of Nio, Zhang Lianchong, Vice President of New Braking Systems, China, Bosch Vehicle Motion Intelligence Control Systems, Chen Xiangbin, President of the E-Mobility Division, China, Schaeffler, Jian Quan, Senior Vice President, China Market Licensing, Avanci, Li Dong, Director of Intelligent Manufacturing Innovation Research Institute, Rockwell Automation (China) Co., Ltd., Tao Gao, Co-Director of Light Vehicle Production, Mobility Global Greater China, and Sun Jian, General Manager of the National Automotive Foreign Trade Transformation and Upgrading Base (Automotive and Parts), respectively shared forward-looking insights and practical paths for empowering Chinese car companies to go global from diverse perspectives such as technology empowerment, compliance system construction, and localization practice, jointly outlining the development scenario of the Chinese automotive industry moving from "product going global" to "systematic going global".

Going Global Enters a New Phase of Systemization

Starting from a multi-dimensional perspective from local industry support to industry platform services to national development overview, multiple guests set the tone for the discussion at the opening session of the forum, conveying a high degree of consensus among all parties on the current phased characteristics of going global.

Chen Ye stated that the Chinese automotive industry is currently at a key node in the transition from product output to systematic output, that is, from early export of complete vehicles to laying out R&D centers, production bases, and supply chain networks overseas, Chinese car brands are accelerating into the global industrial map. As the core carrying area for Shanghai building a world-class automotive industry center, Jiading will continue to explore a new model of collaborative going global with "government guidance, foreign capital empowerment, and local dominance", helping Chinese car companies proceed steadily in the process of globalization.

Chen Ye, Party Secretary and Director of the Shanghai Jiading District Commerce Commission

Shao Gang stated in his address that Anting has formed an automotive industry foundation and mature ecosystem system covering the full chain, building a full-cycle going global service system with "Industrial empowerment + Resource linking + Landing escort". Anting will continue to anchor on the direction of high-quality going global, link global resources with a more open attitude, promote deep cooperation between Chinese and foreign car companies in technology, channels, and other levels, and jointly explore new industrial paths for collaborative going global and mutual benefit and win-win.

Shao Gang, Deputy Party Secretary and Town Mayor of Anting Town, Shanghai Jiading District

Huang Feng stated that promoting bidirectional empowerment and collaborative going global between foreign multinational enterprises and local car companies is the current core work direction of the Shanghai Chamber of Foreign Investment. Combining the observation of recent industry exchanges in Germany, he pointed out that win-win cooperation is a key link in resolving Sino-European automotive trade friction. In the process of going global, Chinese car companies should not only seek their own development but also strive to create value for local ecosystem partners, achieving mutual benefit and win-win through bidirectional empowerment.

Huang Feng, President of the Shanghai Chamber of Foreign Investment

Wei Wenqing analyzed from the perspective of the whole industry that the current Chinese automotive going global faces multiple real challenges such as overseas policy barriers, compliance certification, and cross-border supply chains. The global resources and mature operation experience of foreign multinational enterprises can form complementary advantages with local car companies, pushing the cooperation between Chinese and foreign industries to a new level. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers will continue to build a normalized docking platform, escorting the global development of the Chinese automotive industry to progress steadily and far.

Wei Wenqing, Executive Deputy Secretary-General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers

It is not difficult to discover a common logical trend from the above speeches: Chinese automotive going global is no longer a choice question of "whether to go out", but a must-answer question of "how to go, how to stand firm, and how to go far"; foreign multinational enterprises are no longer simply viewed as competitors or technology suppliers, but are clearly defined as important partners for the deep integration of the Chinese automotive industry into the global system.

Foreign Capital Empowerment Technology and Manufacturing System Support

Focusing on how to support Chinese car companies going global with technology and manufacturing systems, representatives of foreign enterprises from the fields of intelligent manufacturing and core parts respectively gave their own practical plans.

Li Dong shared from the perspective of intelligent manufacturing and industrial automation. He believes that 40 years ago, the foreign system entered China with the wave of globalization; now, China's industrial system is experiencing a reverse "going global", which requires relevant parties to view the coordination of government, industry, academia, research, funds, and services from a more systematic perspective. Data shows that the proportion of China's productive service industry in GDP is about 17%, while European and American countries reach 50% to 60%. The huge growth space suggests that systematic going global will become the core engine of industrial upgrade. Rockwell, which has been deeply cultivating the Chinese market for forty years, based on the scenario complexity that China is the only one globally covering all 666 industrial sub-categories of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, has developed a series of customized solutions such as automotive production scheduling, energy management, and equipment predictive maintenance. These local results have begun to feed back into the global market.

Li Dong, Director of Intelligent Manufacturing Innovation Research Institute, Rockwell Automation (China) Co., Ltd.

Li Dong further stated that systematic going global faces two major core gateways: compliance and manufacturing. On the one hand, enterprises need to face the constraints of the EU CBAM carbon tariff, Battery Passport, Digital Product Passport, and International ESG standards. Although CBAM has not yet directly covered complete vehicles, its extended supervision on batteries, parts, and steel and aluminum materials has constituted a full-chain challenge. The way to solve it lies in systematically designing domestic full-link carbon footprint coverage, forming a standardized data traceability framework, and seamlessly transferring it to the European market. On the other hand, the final resolution of compliance issues needs to return to the production end, involving full-process manufacturing control, cross-border supply chain coordination, virtual simulation pre-validation, and green carbon compliance. To this end, he proposed the idea of building a "Regional Automotive Going Global Joint Innovation Center". Drawing on Rockwell's experience in building a joint net-zero intelligent manufacturing co-creation center in Shanghai, it will gather resources from government, industry, academia, research, and funds through a physical platform, helping Chinese car companies move from product output to capability and brand output in overseas markets.

Chen Xiangbin, President of the E-Mobility Division, China, Schaeffler

From Chen Xiangbin's perspective, the Chinese automotive industry is undergoing a qualitative leap from single product trade, single-point breakthrough, and low-cost price competition to full value chain system going global, production and research global layout, and full-dimension comprehensive capability competition. However, systematic going global faces four major core challenges: geopolitical trade barriers continue to be high, with both North American and European markets showing a tightening trend; localization compliance thresholds are increasingly strict, with overseas development certification cycles taking more than two years, far higher than the domestic market rhythm; brand awareness foundation is weak, with channel and service systems needing to be built from scratch; global supply chains are under pressure, where delivery efficiency and cost control are often difficult to balance at the same time. He stated that Schaeffler's business spans drive guide bearings, drive transmission, drive control, and drive execution, extending to drive empowerment, drive power, drive energy, and drive O&M, fully covering core fields of electric drive, able to provide system-level solutions for Chinese car companies rather than single parts. Schaeffler is willing to reduce going global risks with localization capabilities, accelerate product iteration with technical accumulation, and empower systematic going global with global layout, achieving full-process coordination with Chinese car companies from the first car to the one millionth car, helping the Chinese automotive industry move from "going out" to "going up" in the global market.

Bosch Vehicle Motion Intelligence Control Systems China

Vice President of New Braking Systems Zhang Lianchong

Combining the differentiated characteristics of the three core going global markets of Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, Zhang Lianchong pointed out: Europe, as a compliance testing ground for brands and technology, requires vehicles going global to be re-calibrated for local driving scenarios, and some extreme operating conditions even require local calibration; the Southeast Asian market faces the challenge of fragmentation of localization policies, such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia having independent requirements, making it difficult to radiate to neighboring markets even if a factory is set up in one country; the Latin American market, although expanding relatively quickly, has severe economic environment fluctuations, and OEMs need to weigh local production regulations and exchange rate risks at the same time. In response to the above complex situation, Bosch has built a full-link support system from five dimensions: regulatory compliance, R&D local adaptation, component warranty, after-sales network, and production localization; 150 global R&D bases and 13 professional test sites cover various calibration needs; more than 400 stationed engineers provide on-site technical support, effectively making up for the shortcomings of insufficient overseas OTA infrastructure; an independent after-sales network covers more than 43,000 outlets in 130 countries, which can serve as a substitute for service functions when the OEM's local after-sales system has not yet been built; and in the production localization link, Bosch has mature local supply chains in Europe, Mexico, and Brazil, which can provide a solid guarantee for going global vehicle enterprises to avoid trade barriers.

From these shares, it can be seen that whether it is the systematic empowerment of intelligent manufacturing, or the global coordination of core parts such as electric drive and braking systems, the common value of foreign technology and manufacturing enterprises lies in: using their long-accumulated global R&D, testing, and production networks to help Chinese car companies convert highly fragmented and time-consuming overseas adaptation processes into copyable and scalable standard processes, thereby reducing compliance trial and error costs to the greatest extent.

Supply Chain, Intellectual Property, and Ecosystem Coordination

Focusing on "soft ecosystem" dimensions such as supply chain reverse going global, intellectual property compliance, industry trend analysis, and national-level policy services, the speeches of multiple guests further demonstrated the practical process of foreign capital empowering Chinese car companies to go global. From the linkage of upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, legal and rule compliance, overall strategic analysis to government resource integration, sharing at different levels jointly completed the system capability puzzle needed for Chinese car companies to go global.

Yang Xiaoming, President of Aptiv China and Asia Pacific

From Yang Xiaoming's perspective, Chinese automotive going global has shown a dual-track trend of export and overseas production base construction, with Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia becoming core layout areas. He elaborated on Aptiv's empowerment ideas from four aspects: First, global layout needs adaptive adjustments; quotes from European teams are often several times higher than the prices acceptable to Chinese car companies, indicating that global resource advantages cannot automatically be converted into competitiveness and must actively transform in organizational efficiency and cost structure; Second, technical differentiation accelerates evolution; there is already a generation gap in regulations and implementation paths for intelligent cockpits and L2 level driving assistance between China and the West, and China has more prominent advantages in the field of high-level intelligent driving, which is evidenced by Aptiv's 4D Satellite Radar developed in China and launched first in China; Third, supply chain collaborative going global is accelerating; Aptiv has deeply participated in the localization process of joint ventures such as SAIC Volkswagen in the past, and now is promoting Chinese suppliers to go overseas with OEMs at a speed of 6 to 10 per year; Fourth, international enterprises themselves also need to transform and continuously explore in three aspects of technology iteration speed, supply chain feedback to global, and global conversion of Chinese advantages in order to seize the annual millions of vehicle level going global increment.

Jian Quan, Senior Vice President of China Market Licensing, Avanci

Qian Quan focused on the intellectual property field, stating that in the context of intelligent connected vehicles accelerating going global, intellectual property compliance has become an unavoidable strategic issue. As a one-stop patent licensing platform focusing on the cellular communication technology field, Avanci aggregates many standard essential patent holders on the one hand, and on the other hand provides standardized licensing terms and open and transparent pricing mechanisms for vertical industries such as automobiles, helping car companies obtain global patent usage rights that are long-term, predictable, and consistent with competitors' conditions, thereby avoiding pain points such as time-consuming and laborious bilateral licensing negotiations, information opacity, and potential litigation disputes. He summarized Avanci's systematic support for Chinese car companies to go global from four dimensions: solving the global licensing problem of the vast majority of standard essential patents with fair business terms; providing efficient alternative paths outside of bilateral negotiations; significantly reducing compliance and transaction costs of patent licensing; and helping Chinese going global brands build a fair and just global competition environment, changing the previous passive situation of opaque patent price bargaining and excessive risk exposure.

Tao Gao, Co-Director of Light Vehicle Production, Mobility Global Greater China

Tao Gao made trend analysis from the perspective of global industry research. He believes that the Chinese automotive industry is reshaping the global pattern at a pace far faster than the historical speed of Japan and South Korea. Export volume has jumped from the million level five years ago to the 8 million vehicles expected this year, but this is only the prologue to going global; facing the status of surplus domestic capacity, car companies embrace the overseas market with a positive attitude, while the continuous rise of New Energy Vehicle penetration rates in Europe and Southeast Asia provides a strategic window for Chinese brands. At the same time, he also pointed out concerns about brand fragmentation: nearly 40 enterprises are competing for 16% of the overseas market share, and the risk of involution needs to be transformed into high-quality competition and cooperation. The key to breaking the situation lies in avoiding trade barriers through local production and building moats relying on industry integration advantages rather than purely cost or speed.

Sun Jian, General Manager of the National Automotive Foreign Trade Transformation and Upgrading Base (Automotive and Parts)

Sun Jian emphasized in policy promotion that the model of low-price competition and self-destruction should definitely not be replicated overseas. As a government-led "Global Linker", the National Automotive and Parts Export Base is committed to providing SMEs with a full-process going global solution. Its core advantages lie in resolving cross-border trust barriers with national-level credit endorsement, achieving precise resource matching relying on a huge database, and gathering supply and demand ends resources with "orders" as traction. The base has launched ten services covering finance, logistics, law, talent, and business model design, adhering to the grouping concept of "First Shanghai, Then Going Global", by selecting partners with landing capabilities globally, and replicating the New Energy ecosystem model to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Value Persistence and Collaborative Win-Win of Local Car Companies

While foreign enterprises share experiences and plans, the voices of local car companies from China also provide an important complementary perspective for the forum. Gao Gang shared from the perspective of Nio's compliance construction and brand value building. In his view, Chinese car companies' going global has entered a new stage of capability and brand competition, the essence of which lies in the persistence of the value system. Nio has adhered to the pure electric route, full-stack self-research, extreme safety, and user service since its inception. This is not only the product foundation but also the moat for brand going global. In specific practice, global layout not only covers R&D, supply chain, and sales services but also focuses on pre-control of compliance risks: establishing a compliance committee directly under the board of directors, building more than 10 compliance policies applicable globally, and actively absorbing local talent into the corporate culture to deal with regional differences in the way of "alignment" rather than one-way output; at the same time, the enterprise is fully embracing artificial intelligence, building a global legal compliance AI platform covering the whole group, continuously improving operational efficiency. He emphasized that going global is not simply migrating the domestic model but is driven by underlying values, learning governance experience from excellent foreign partners such as Bosch and Schaeffler, and achieving sustainable mutual trust and win-win overseas.

Gao Gang, Vice President, Global Chief Legal Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer of Nio

Comprehensive discussion of multiple levels of this forum clearly shows the common trends and inspirations presented by the Chinese automotive industry's going global. First, the going global model has been upgraded from simple product trade to systematic going global covering R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, and brand, which puts higher requirements on the enterprise's global governance capabilities. Second, the role of foreign multinational enterprises is undergoing a profound transformation, gradually evolving from early technology suppliers to "empowering partners" who deeply participate in the global strategy of Chinese car companies; whether it is intelligent manufacturing, core parts, supply chain coordination, intellectual property licensing, or localization production and after-sales networks, they can effectively help Chinese car companies avoid overseas compliance, certification, and supply chain risks. Third, compliance and standardization construction has become a core variable that determines whether going global can proceed steadily and far. From EU carbon tariffs, Battery Passports and other green trade barriers to standard essential patent licensing and regional technical regulation differences, all require upstream and downstream enterprises of the industrial chain to establish systematic compliance capabilities as early as possible. Fourth, supply chain collaborative going global is becoming a new trend, with more and more Chinese parts suppliers following vehicle enterprises in "reverse going global", forming new industrial ecosystem collaboration relationships with foreign enterprises in overseas markets.

The going global of the Chinese automotive industry is not only a strategic need for its own development but should also be committed to creating value for local overseas ecosystem partners, achieving mutual benefit and win-win through bidirectional empowerment. Against the background of profound adjustments in the global trade pattern and the acceleration of iteration in green and low-carbon and intelligent connected technology, the global network and localization capabilities of foreign enterprises are deeply coupled with the technological innovation and industrial scale advantages of Chinese car companies, providing continuous momentum for the global development of the Chinese automotive industry. In the future, with the implementation of more normalized docking platforms and joint innovation mechanisms, the deep coordination of Chinese and foreign automotive industrial chains is expected to further accelerate. In this process, the Intelligent Manufacturing Branch of the Shanghai Chamber of Foreign Investment and the Jiading District Foreign-invested Enterprise Association will also continue to play the platform advantage, gather industry wisdom and resources, promote deep cooperation between foreign and local automotive enterprises, and build a more solid organizational support and ecological guarantee for industrial going global.