October 16, Changan Automobile issued an announcement that Zhu Huarong continues to serve as Party Secretary and Chairman of China Changan Automobile Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "China Changan Automobile"), coordinating the overall planning and long-term development of the automobile businesses under the group from the group level, and no longer holds any position in Changan Automobile and its holding subsidiaries. Former Changan Automobile President Zhao Fei was promoted to Chairman, and former Executive Vice President Ye Pei was promoted to President.

If one only looks at personnel changes, this seems to be just a management position adjustment. However, against the background of the one-year anniversary of the establishment of the China Changan Automobile Group and the continuous deepening of automotive Central Enterprise SOE reform, what this adjustment truly warrants attention to might be a deeper issue: After the group integration completes the initial organizational setup, how to further streamline the relationship between the group and the listed company, allowing strategic coordination and market-based operations to play their respective roles, while forming more effective synergy?

File Photo: Zhu Huarong participated in the 2023 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Coffee Gathering · Car Night Talk event

Looking back to the initial establishment of China Changan Automobile, Zhu Huarong had stated: "The new Changan is not as simple as changing a sign or integrating an architecture, we need to conduct experiments in the mechanism, creating combat capabilities adapted to market rhythms under the logic of Central Enterprises."

Now, this reform is further moving from the organizational structure level to the operation mechanism level. Previously, when Global Auto communicated with Li Jin, Vice Chairman and Chief Expert of the SOE Management Think Tank, he pointed out that for the new round of automotive Central Enterprise reform, what is truly important is no longer just the recombination of scale, but whether new "chemical reactions" can be produced after resources are reallocated.

This "chemical reaction" is first reflected in the reshaping of corporate capabilities. Today, judging the competitiveness of an automobile enterprise cannot rely solely on traditional indicators such as production/sales volume and asset scale; it is more important to see whether it can continuously form new capabilities. Innovation here includes not only technical breakthroughs but also how products are defined, how organizations collaborate, how users are operated, how the supply chain is integrated, and how business models adjust continuously with market changes. Whoever can form these capabilities faster will have more opportunities to take the initiative in the next stage.

The formation of these capabilities cannot do without the support of organizations and mechanisms. The explanation provided by China Changan Automobile regarding this adjustment offers an important entry point. In the early stages of the group's establishment, a multi-person concurrent management model was adopted to ensure the smooth establishment of the new Central Enterprise and the normal operation of Changan Automobile. With the gradual improvement of group governance, how to further strengthen the group's strategic leading role while enhancing the listed company's independent operational capabilities has become the core issue that this adjustment needs to solve.

File Photo: Zhao Fei participated in the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Coffee Gathering · Car Night Talk event

From the arrangement after the adjustment, the responsibility boundaries between the group and the listed company are further clarified. Zhu Huarong focuses on strategic coordination at the China Changan Automobile Group level. Zhao Fei concurrently serves as General Manager of the Group and Chairman of Changan Automobile, responsible for connecting group strategy with listed company development. Ye Pei serves as President of Changan Automobile, further focusing on the operation and management of the listed company.

Behind this is actually the recalibration of the relationship between group strategic coordination and listed company market-based operations. For China Changan Automobile Group, it needs to coordinate business layout, resource allocation, and industrial synergy from a higher strategic dimension, promoting the connection of overall group development with national strategic requirements. For listed companies like Changan Automobile, the core task is to face market competition directly, respond to user needs faster, and form breakthroughs in products, technology, marketing, and operational efficiency. Both sides require both a clear division of rights and responsibilities and an efficient coordination mechanism.

As Professor Li Jin pointed out, the development of the new energy vehicle industry is no longer just an industry issue, but a matter concerning the quality of the entire national economic development. In his view, future Central Enterprises must conduct deep adjustments from the perspective of the grand pattern of global competition, rather than simply pursuing scale expansion. This adjustment includes both technical innovation and institutional reform.

What Changan Automobile is experiencing is exactly such changes. From the perspective of technical accumulation, Changan Automobile's R&D investment ratio reached 7.67% in 2025, possessing over 7,500 intelligent talents, cumulatively building over 400,000 virtual simulation test scenarios, and the full-stack self-developed "Tianshu Navigation" intelligent driving assistance system has begun to achieve large-scale commercial use. Changan Qiyuan Q06's cumulative orders broke through 35,000 units within 24 hours of launch, indicating that technical capabilities are accelerating transformation into product and market performance.

From the perspective of globalization layout, Changan's pace is also further accelerating. Currently, its business covers 149 countries and regions, the Thailand new energy vehicle assembly plant has already started production, and 17 KD factories have been built in 8 countries including Brazil, with overseas capacity reaching 446,000 units. According to management, Changan's overseas sales are expected to reach over 900,000 units this year, and next year plans to push the overseas sales of independent brands to double.

These achievements indicate that Changan already possesses technical accumulation and globalization foundations. However, the deeper the globalization promotion, the higher the requirement for the enterprise's overall operational capability. In other words, as Changan moves from product overseas expansion to systematic global layout, competition is no longer limited to the performance of a single product or business, but whether the entire organization can operate efficiently around market demands. After group integration, whether stronger system capabilities can be formed is becoming a question Changan must answer for its next stage of development.

The "two-level organization, one-level efficiency" proposed by Changan Automobile is precisely the response to this issue. Although the group and listed companies bear different responsibilities, the division of organizational levels should not become a source of efficiency loss. Major matters require group coordination, while specific businesses should be as close to the market as possible with quick decision-making. Through direct information, compressed processes, and reducing unnecessary internal circulation, let the group's strategic guidance and the listed company's market response form a synergy, rather than letting the two-level organizations operate separately.

Matching the governance architecture adjustment is also the optimization of the management team. In this adjustment, Yang Dayong was promoted to Executive Vice President, Deng Chenghao was promoted to Executive Vice President, and the responsibilities of some management personnel were also adjusted accordingly. According to the official explanation, this adjustment not only involves professional structure but also takes into account age structure and experience structure. The purpose is not simply to pursue the rejuvenation of the management team, but to further optimize team configuration, allowing talent with different professional backgrounds and familiar with industry development laws to undertake corresponding responsibilities, enhancing organizational vitality and execution capability while maintaining strategic continuity.

If the vision is expanded a bit more, this adjustment can also be observed against the background of the continuous deepening of automotive Central Enterprise SOE reform. Whether it is the "Three Big, Three Small" industry layout, or the four major business directions proposed by China Changan Automobile "New Cars, New Components, New Services, New Ecosystems", reform cannot stay at the recombination of organizational structure, more importantly is to form effective synergy between different businesses.

Professor Li Jin once pointed out that the new energy vehicle market has moved from a simple expansion stage into a competitive stage of selection of the fittest and elimination of the weak, how Central Enterprises and SOEs can play a leading role and optimize market layout will directly affect the future of the entire industry. This is a question that current automotive Central and SOE reform needs to answer.

As Zhu Huarong said, the Center requires Central Enterprises to "forge a bloodied path" in fierce competition. In his view, this is not only a breakthrough in sales targets, but also a march towards world-class enterprises. In the highly competitive automobile industry, Central and SOEs must build high-efficiency market-based mechanisms and operational capabilities. For China Changan Automobile, the system cannot change, but mechanisms can be continuously optimized. The Central level also clearly stated that there is still room for mechanism optimization.

In other words, for automotive Central Enterprises and SOEs, serving national strategy and participating in market competition are not contradictory. On the contrary, the more one faces fierce global competition, the more one needs to further streamline rights and responsibilities relationships and improve resource allocation efficiency through mechanism optimization. The significance of reform lies not only in optimizing industry layout but also in establishing a set of operational mechanisms that can adapt to market changes and support long-term competition.

Organizational integration solves how resources are combined, while mechanism reform answers how resources generate value. For Changan, the true test is whether this adjustment can let the group's strategic coordination capabilities and the listed company's market-based operational capabilities form a synergy. In this sense, architectural adjustment is just the starting point; how to make organizations more efficient and resources better serve the market is the answer sheet this reform truly needs to hand in.