My personal take is that the Chinese car makers have somewhat missed their opportunity to introduce their own brands to the US market. Due to the pandemic and China's own policies, the tide is now against them. But Chinese companies do own a number of western brands (Volvo, MG, etc.) and those can continue to be viable or even grow and expand.

> The US, both by regulatory standards and consumer expectations, puts a lot of demands on the content of cars.

When Buick began selling a lot of cars in China, they had to improve the quality of their interiors in order to live up to the standards of the Chinese car buyers! It actually led to them also improving the interior quality of the cars they sold in the US. But it was too little, too late for them here, so the Buick brand now only exists in the Chinese market. They recently announced a 100K+ USD luxury minivan in China that would be ridiculous overkill in the US:

https://jalopnik.com/buick-century-returns-as-an-ultra-luxur...

The mid/high end Chinese market is just as demanding as the rest of the world, and maybe more so in some respects. So many Chinese carmakers already know how to make cars that are up to US/EU standards.