In a completely free market, it's less clear. A lot of what Chinese companies do could be called dumping, and they're doing it with government support.
I'd be interested to read more about this claim, if you have a link/source.
Regardless, we desperately need to de-carbonize our transportation sector. If China is the only country willing to put the dollars in to actually do that, then they deserve to reap the benefits of the new energy economy they helped build. Economics of the cars themselves aside, any effort put in to minimizing the costs of climate change will pay for itself by the end of the century.
European and American car makers have also gotten enormous support from their governments, except in other forms, like for example VW not being bankrupted to hell by the German government during Diesel gate for example.
Every government can be expected to help local industry where reasonable, because that is in many ways what the constituents/electorate actually wants/needs.
What sentences do people get when they kill other people? Granted, VW never put a gun to anyone's head and pulled the trigger, but their increased emissions have had an effect in reduced lifespan of citizens breathing across the major markets, collective health issues which should carry more than a slap on the wrist.
>Every government can be expected to help local industry where reasonable, because that is in many ways what the constituents/electorate actually wants/needs.
Sure, but then let's stop singling out China as if only they're doing it and not western governments too.
First, I believe that focussing on health outcomes misses the mark a bit in this case; I see the main problem in the actions that were taken to intentionally and maliciously circumvent the regulations much more so than the actual harm from the emissions (because the excess was not multiple orders of magnitude, and estimates on the effects pale completely compared with general road fatalities too).
Second: There is a very adjacent historical precedent for this: Leaded gas. In the 1920s alone, 17 workers died from poisoning while producing fuel additives; by the 1940s, industry consortiums had the suppression of critical science down to an art (by publicly discrediting scientist, pressuring institutions and using law-fare).
You could make a strong ethical case in my opinion that a lot of people responsible for this should not just have been stripped of related profits, but actually put in front of a firing squad (millions died!). Absolutely nothing was done.
In the case of VW, on the other hand, they paid roughly a year of profits (double digit revenue percentage) and the CEO at least lost his job (not holding my breath for a criminal conviction though, which would've been very obviously deserved in my view).
It is missing the forest for the trees. The core fact is that chinese manufacturing pays workers an average $25k/year ($15k before purchasing power adjusting!!) for a 49h week. Are american workers (or other westerners) willing to work for that? No. Are consumers actually willing to pay the difference? Probably also no.
I'm not saying that there are no problems with the above in China, but thats not where their manufacturing dominance comes from. On the other hand, their government did make a bunch of good decisions and they did provide a lot of the necessary prerequisites for local industry to thrive.
But longer term, rising wages are gonna affect them in the same way that they did US industry 60 years ago, and Japanese manufacturing 30 years ago. We have less local manufacturing now because we grew so rich and that is not the worst problem to have.
This is kind of what chinese assembly is looking like these days - robots and high tech https://youtu.be/gjbwq5vp0C4?t=12
That was Geely and there's some video of BYD here https://youtu.be/Bd_bx6a4hgE
Deeper problem for what?
I don't think that automation changes the whole picture as much as you might think.
Sure, the wage component of product cost is gonna decrease, but you still need people to build, upgrade, maintain and operate those assembly lines, and cheaper wages there still mean lower costs. Which is why EU car manufacturers also moved a lot of their production eastward (Slovenia, Hungary, etc.) despite very high automation.