Two Chinese auto plants run by German automaker Volkswagen AG through joint ventures are planning to partly suspend production lines to conduct maintenance work, state television reported yesterday.
The news comes amid a huge slump in sales of vehicles in China, the world’s second-largest vehicle market after the US.
China’s CCTV said in its midday bulletin that FAW-Volkswagen Automobile Co plans to suspend part of its production at a plant in Changchun, the capital of Jilin Province in northeastern China, at the end of the year to carry out maintenance.
Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co will also suspend work at its production line for half a month from sometime next week to early next month, the Beijing News Daily reported.
The reports did not give details and calls to Volkswagen’s office in Beijing and the two joint venture companies rang unanswered yesterday.
Volkswagen sold about 910,000 vehicles to customers in China last year.
Vehicle sales in China fell 16 percent last month — a sharp reverse for China’s automakers, which saw sales grow by 18.5 percent last year. Global automakers were counting on fast-growing Chinese sales to help drive revenue growth as sales elsewhere weakened.
Industry Minister Li Yizhong (李毅中) said on Friday Beijing is considering ways to revive sales including cutting taxes, offering low-interest loans or forcing older vehicles off the road.
Separately, Toyota Motor Corp. will delay investment in boosting capacity at its overseas factories as declining sales and a strengthening yen reduce earnings, the Nikkei Shimbun reported.
The automaker will freeze investment in a plant in Tianjin, China that makes Crown sedans and delay starting operations at a factory in Changchun until after 2011, the Nikkei reported without saying where it obtained the information.
The company, based in Toyota City, Japan, will also delay making Corolla cars in Brazil and India, the Nikkei said.
“We have been reviewing our new projects including in India, Brazil, China and the US, as we announced on Nov. 6,” Hideaki Homma, spokesman for Toyota, said yesterday.
“Nothing has been decided. We will report if there are any changes to plans,” he said.
Toyota has been spending ¥1.5 trillion annually (US$16.46 billion) on new facilities worldwide in the past few years, the Nikkei said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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