CBN丨Chinese NEVs deepen local cooperation in SE. Asian market

Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.

Coming up on today’s program

• Chinese NEVs power up Southeast Asia through deepened partnerships;
• Intel hires Malaysian-Chinese veteran as new CEO.

Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours

Last November, Chinese automaker SAIC-GM-Wuling (SGMW) rolled a compact electric vehicle model off the assembly line at its subsidiary in Indonesia. The sleek four-seater, the subsidiary's 160,000th vehicle produced in the country, was soon on its way to hit a showroom in Thailand.

From launching its first model in Indonesia to surpassing this milestone, SGMW, headquartered in the industrial city of Liuzhou in south China's Guangxi, took just seven years to build a reliable new energy vehicle (NEV) supply chain, driving its car sales in Southeast Asia.

As the first Chinese automaker to invest and establish a factory in Indonesia, SGMW has played a key role in expanding China's electric fleet and has gained over 50 percent of the local NEV market share.

China's increasing footprint in this rapidly growing market has been propped up by a legion of key domestic players, with manufacturers such as BYD, Chery and Great Wall Motor all taking their share of the pie.

Data from the Association of Indonesian Automotive Industries shows that the five bestselling NEV models in the country in 2024 were from three different Chinese carmakers, with the BYD M6 leading the pack.

In Thailand, where the number of registered pure electric cars reached 70,000 to account for about 14 percent of total car sales in 2024, four out of the five bestsellers were from Chinese brands. The same goes for Cambodia, where BYD holds the pole position in the nascent NEV market.

Surging NEV sales have led to Chinese brands doubling their market share, which expanded from 5 percent to 11 percent in 2023.

Behind China's booming car export business are years of painstaking efforts to groom a vast network of locally based suppliers that are essential to building a resilient transnational supply chain.

In Indonesia, SGMW has helped guide 17 Chinese enterprises on the auto supply chain to venture abroad, developing over 100 local suppliers over the past seven years.

Last November, the China-Indonesia Institute of Modern Craftsmanship of New Energy Vehicle, a training base established by Liuzhou City Vocational College, Indonesia's Anand Industrial Training Institute and SGMW's Indonesian subsidiary, was officially inaugurated in Indonesia.

For years, emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa have unlocked huge growth potential. In the next 10 years, six major ASEAN economies will see the compound annual growth rate of their NEV markets reach between 16 percent and 39 percent, according to forecasts from various market research firms.

Industry and company news

• Manus AI said its AI agent Manus has two million people queued to use it over the past seven days, adding that its teams are excited and humbled to see the astonishing user demand and are working hard to make Manus available as soon as possible.
• NetEase Cloud Music will integrate DeepSeek’s AI model and test its capabilities to enhance various aspects of the user experience, including music search, interactive communication, and services for creators, the Chinese online music platform said yesterday.
• Chinese hotpot giant Haidilao said it would fork out as much as 10 million yuan to compensate over 4,000 diners who had visited one of its outlets in Shanghai after two diners urinated into their hotpot broth. Haidilao said the restaurant in question replaced all its cookware and tableware and carried out a thorough cleaning and disinfection on March 8. It will fully refund the meal costs to customers who visited the restaurant between February 24 and March 8 and provide additional cash compensation equivalent to 10 times the order payment, the statement said.

GBA express

• Hong Kong authorities on Thursday relaxed rules to allow high net worth individuals to access an insurance product that has been gaining traction in Singapore and the United States. The so-called indexed universal life policy allows premium holders to pledge assets, such as equities and bonds, to the insurance company as a custodian in lieu of paying cash. The product, which has part of its cash value component tracking a benchmark index performance, was previously unavailable in Hong Kong due to regulation and risk concerns.
• Hong Kong’s stock exchange is reportedly discussing options to lower the threshold for investors to buy some of the city’s most expensive stocks after Financial Secretary Paul Chan announced the review last month to boost trading. Currently the trading unit is set by each company and can range from 100 shares per trade to thousands. Other markets, including in the Chinese mainland, typically trade with a standardized unit of 100 shares and in some cases as low as a single share.
• JD.com is in the process of choosing a place to open a JD Mall in Hong Hong featuring home appliances, marking the arrival of another Chinese e-commerce giant in the city, according to local media reports. The company has been offering high salaries to poach talent from retail rivals in preparation for the launch of the brick-and-mortar store.
• Hong Kong suspended imports of poultry meat and products, including poultry eggs, from the Bronx and Westchester counties in the US state of New York after the World Organization for Animal Health warned about a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza outbreak.

Asia-Pacific highlights

• Intel has appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO to succeed Interim Co-CEOs David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, effective March 18, in an attempt to catch up in the AI race. As a 20-year veteran in the semiconductor industry, Tan will rejoin the board after quitting last August. Born in Malaysia, Tan graduated from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University before getting a master’s degree in MIT.
• Singapore Airlines will ban the use of portable power banks on flights from next month, splitting from regional rivalCathay Pacific Airways, after batteries were suspected to have led to fires or smoke in planes. The Singapore Air group, which also includes budget carrier Scoot, said customers won’t be allowed to charge power banks via onboard USB ports or use them to charge personal devices throughout the duration of a flight starting April 1.

Executive Editor: Sonia YU

Editor: LI Yanxia

Host: Stephanie LI

Writer: Stephanie LI

Sound Editor: Stephanie LI

Graphic Designer: ZHENG Wenjing, LIAO Yuanni

Produced by 21st Century Business Herald Dept. of Overseas News.

Presented by SFC