Something I learned from my trip to China: you can be fast followers if you’re willing to learn from the best.

Walking down the silent streets of Beijing I listened to the future of mobility. Statistics can’t convey the silence of the streets. When an old — usually German or Japanese combustion engine drove by, I heard and smelled China’s smoggy past.

As I checked my phone, together with your ID — your most precious possession in China — I learned France and Germany had agreed a deal to remake Europe’s auto industry.

Brussels-bubble-me might have thought this deal — and the slightly worse European Parliament copy of the deal a week later — was more or less what was to be expected. Seen through a rosy lens the deal maintains a degree of pressure on carmakers to electrify whilst introducing elements of ‘technological neutrality’ the political right so desired.

Perhaps lowering the pressure on carmakers while using local content rules to bar Chinese carmakers like BYD from the company car market could be a clever ploy? It might just buy European industry some time.

But seen from China the car deal is simply terrible and displays exactly the lack of leadership and consistency that Chinese policymakers so deride in western politicians. One of my interlocutors said, “you have politicians, we have statesmen”. I pushed back, spoke up for Europe, but painful as it may be, these days, those words have a ring of truth to them.

Source link