(Believe it or not, I have a degree in Soviet Area Studies, a Master’s in fact. You’d think the university would refund my tuition, since the USSR no longer exists. But, wait: someone seems to be trying to put it back together again….)
China and Russia have a long and complex border and a long and complex relationship over time. But today we’ll focus purely on an automotive aspect of that relationship, and just in the present day. (For a look further back in time, check out the history of China FAW Group.) We are all aware of how China has become a major automotive exporter globally, of both ICE and EV (BEV and PHEV) vehicles. This growth has been dynamic and will likely continue. As I have mentioned before, this trend got a bit of a tailwind with the invasion of Ukraine, in that various “Western” OEMs decided to cut back on supply to Russia. And Chinese OEMs stepped in to fill that gap. Until now, however, I hadn’t seen a good chart showing just how far Chinese supply to Russia has developed.
But thanks to ace analyst Colin Langan at Wells Fargo, using S&P data, now we have one:
This is impressive by any standards: a roughly 15-fold surge in Chinese market share in just a couple of years or so. We rarely see such dramatic swings in automotive markets, so this one really stands out.
I try to keep this blog as apolitical as possible, so I won’t comment further, except to cite this as an example of how the insatiability of both auto supply and auto demand drives international trade. To quote the renowned geopolitical analyst David Lynch, in his 1984 version of Dune: “The spice must flow.”1
Sorry about that leap from cars to condiments, but I will point out that there is precedent: there was a car called the Sage, produced in France in the early 1900s. And sage is a spice an herb, so I’m keeping the Lynch line in. (Yes, Francophones, the French word for the plant known as “sage” in English is “sauge.” But close enough, ok?) (My thanks to a sharp-eyed reader with more expertise in the kitchen than I have (a group which includes essentially everyone on Earth), who pointed out my mislabeling of sage as a spice rather than as an herb. That’s an error as egregious as confusing a de Dion tube with a Hotchkiss drive!)