Groundbreaking News: GM China Said To Build New Factory

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Despite the fact that the Chinese new car market barely grew last year, and ignoring commentators that predict a flat market for this year also, GM has expansionist plans for the region. According to Bloomberg, GM should shortly receive approval to build a $1.1 billion factory in China, which will expand GM China’s annual capacity by 300,000 units.

The plant belonging to GM’s joint venture with SAIC will be located in Wuhan, Hubei province. Shanghai GM says no formal decision has been reached. Last December, China announced that foreigners are no longer encouraged to invest into car companies. GM already is invested …

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Ron Ron on Feb 11, 2012

    It takes several years to build an assembly plant and bring it up to capacity. Who cares what commentators are predicting for this year.

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    • Damikco Damikco on Feb 12, 2012

      @highdesertcat I dont want to see anything come here from China.

  • GS650G GS650G on Feb 11, 2012

    It's wonderful to see the US taxpayers helping to create jobs in a country that competes with us. Maybe China can forgive a little of our national debt and return the favor. Didn't think so.

  • Secret Hi5 Secret Hi5 on Feb 11, 2012

    Schmitt said: ". . . GM has expansionist plans for the region." --I think you meant to use the word "expansion" instead of "expansionist," which has a quite a different meaning.

  • PrincipalDan PrincipalDan on Feb 12, 2012

    I'll agree with HighDesertCat and say that GM might as well do all Buick designing and manufacturing in China and import them here. Given that China buys roughly 2x as many given Buicks in a year as the USA does it might as well be a Chinese based brand.

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    • Highdesertcat Highdesertcat on Feb 12, 2012

      @damikco What we need to do is elect politicians who enact legislation that would make it more advantageous for businesses to produce inside America instead of sending jobs overseas or to Mexico and Canada. No one complains about the domestic car makers producing in Canada, something they have done since the invention of the wheel. Yet there are so many complaints about producing in Mexico and Asia, or the foreigners coming over here, to America, and providing sorely needed jobs to Americans. If the domestic auto manufacturers made things worth buying they would not have lost so many sales and market share to the foreigners during the last three decades of the mass exodus. I bet all those Americans working at the transplants making cars for Americans right here in America are happy to be working without the UAW collectively bargaining away their jobs, like we saw during the past eight years. Even if none of the Chinese-made GM products ever come to America, it means that GM will be making profits which is something that the US automakers are hard-pressed to do with sales to the North American market alone.

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