This is a forum dedicated to China, Chinese culture Chinese language, and Chinese people.
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https://x.com/i/status/2019025935882760666
Fact-checking :
- For BYD : « BYD has the most R&D personnel among automakers and nearly 110,000 engineers, CEO says »
- For Tesla : « As of December 31, 2025, our employee headcount worldwide was 134,785 »
"China is the future" the rest of the world is fucking asleep
China is the future of the auto industry, if it isn't already.
You can't already be the future. That's called being the present.
From the article it wasn't clear to me if all of those engineers were in R&D or if they had that many engineers in total
It would be nice if China recognized that cars aren't the future at all. Every car produced has been a waste of resources and has created pressure for unsustainable suburban development. Every mile of road built represents 25,000 square feet of space that will never be reclaimed, never be useful again.
China has incredible rates of building high speed rail, public transit networks, and smart, walkable city design. Cars are supplementary.
China absolutely does recognise that though? Why do you think they invest so much in public transport like HSR, sprawling subways and a huge bus network? They simply realise that the green revolution much like the socialist one is a process. You can't just press the green button and do away with cars, you need to first build up the infrastructure to support every part of society not just the urban cores.
Since cars remain a necessity for many as China has a huge swathe of rural areas not yet catered to (to the the extent required) by public transport connections it's best to have the cleanest best version of cars until they are.
It's the same logic behind why they built new coal plants even into last year. Coal is unfortunately still necessary to support the grid for now but the new ones are much more efficient and clean and therefore it's worth investing in their replacement with newer plants until they can be fully phased out.
Adding to what @QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml said, keep in mind there's multiple different interests here. The bourgeoisie still make a significant amount of economic decisions in China, and they're heavily influenced by the west/capitalism. At the same time, the CPC guides those companies (either through voting shares or party connections) towards accomplishing the goals of the party.
So it is a contradiction. Should China do more to export trains instead of cars? Sure, but they're still somewhat at the mercy of the global market. And China is still the largest exporter of trains anyway.
Is more engineers necessary better? Especially when it gets to 120,000.
I don't think BYD would have 120,000 engineers on payroll if they weren't nessesary.
How many BYD engineers do you need to change a lightbulb?
Anything from 5 to 100 is correct. Megacorps formalizing things is a bitch.
Nah, this doesn't seem like a valid argument. A lot of companies these days have a ton of unnecessary employees
okay so we're comparing apples to apples?
A lot of companies get bloated and have totally unnecessary emplyees tbh
It's possible they would. Maybe they'd want to make sure the government wants them to stay operating at any cost, because if the government fails to do so they'll have 120,000 unemployed engineers.
That's a whopping 0.00008% of china, I did that calculation because I thought it would be a bigger percentage than that. 120,000 is a lot! I guess that puts into perspective how big the Chinese population is.
Also the chinese govenment wants technological development, there goal is to be at the forefront of computers and carbon neutral technology. BYD is leading the electric car industry right now and China wants them to prosper, not shut them down.
.008%, you forgot to convert to a percentage
Still very small though
Oh I thought I did do that, I must have just copied the wrong result.
I've heard they're running three shifts of engineers. So that the work gets done faster. Still a lot of engineers though.
Shoulda taken Mandarin in school...
My grandparents grocery store has a cashier, that studied Chinese, intending to become a translator.
Turns out it's cheaper to hire a Chinese worker that know German than a German that knows Chinese.
rednote is helping me a lot w this.
it's nice knowing how to clap back at chuds online in another language. lol
Yah I'm trying a bit but now I'm old and stupid shoulda done it when I was young and impressionable.
All I really got so far is 我吃麻辣 and 他不吃麻辣 to help me and the boyfriend get the right food at restaurants lmao
Hell yea, lmao! Yea I can't speak or read Mandarin in any capacity, I'm learning a different language currently.
Yah I'm trying a bit but now I'm old and stupid shoulda done it when I was young and impressionable.
All I really got so far is 我吃麻辣 and 他不吃麻辣 to help me and the boyfriend get the right food at restaurants lmao
They probably hire engineers for other roles, because there are to many with that degree.
Bonkers level.
It gives hope 👍
It does!
Okay. Whats BYD?
They're also the second largest battery manufacturer in the world, behind CATL, another Chinese company.
I think you'll hear more of it in the future, it's kinda like a "new" Huawei.
I was surprised to spot a BYD dealership in the south of Nantes in France, that's when the numbers start feeling real.
https://www.byd.com/eu/find-store
If you live in the US, protectionnism may prevent you from seeing a BYD car dealership. A.f.a.i.k. there's none, perhaps because there's a 100% tariff on chinese EVs, and/or for other reasons(, security is just another one of these lies we like to tell our citizens).
Canada also had a 100% tariff rate until a few weeks ago, they'll now admit 49.000 vehicles each year at a 6.1% tariff rate.
In the EU, states put a 20-30% tariff(, a.f.a.i.k. their reasons are the existence of chinese subventions, suddenly free trade doesn't benefit the states practicing it because it destroys the local companies, anyway...)
BYD is getting really popular here in australia, I see them all the time. Many other chinese brands are popping up as well. Quite impressive considering the stigma around china being cheap, shit and communism here.
To be fair, the last part is true, China is run by communists. That's a good thing, though.
Without China, it'd be ingrained in all of us that socialism can never work, and has failed everytime it was tried, probably for centuries/ever. Just another one of these lies. So many conditions had to be reunited for being given one last chance after 1991(, explosive growth that no country ever went through, being "busy" in the Middle-East, a successful chinese strategy towards outside&inside, ...)
It's ironic that our (religious )values point out that a society should be judged by how it treats the poorest/weakest/l(e)ast of us, but we'll be anti-socialist with an "exploit or be exploited" mindset.
Anyway 🤷
Well said!
One last thing(, that's linked to EVs), have you ever heard of the "three old things" ?
I discovered that 'a few months'/'several weeks' ago, and i'm still thinking about it from time to time : https://youtu.be/6E89qUXTX-k?t=2149
(https://files.catbox.moe/b1kfo4.mp4 if the video player doesn't work)
It's not as official as the five year plan, but it's confirmed here or there :
From aspirations to own watches, bicycles and sewing machines (the “older three things”) of the late 1970s, to the color televisions, refrigerators and washing machines (the “old three things”) of the late 1980s, to the stereos, air conditioners and mobile phones (the “new three things”) of the late 1990s, and to the computers, pianos and automobiles (the “newer three things”) of today
As for the next five-year plan(, with brain-computer interfaces) :
I watched that video a little while ago it's great that china is beginning to compete at the highest level of technology and challenging the US's multi decade reign of silicon monopoly.
No, I hadn't really heard much about that. And thanks for the link to the 15th FYP, I haven't investigated it that much yet!
one of these days, backyard mechanics are going to have several byd's for part cannibalization like the do w old gm3800's lol
A Chinese car manufacturer, tons of cutting-edge EVs for great prices. Massive amount of sales.
Okay numbers are good, but don't pretend trying to do a single simple thing in an organization that large is not a snails crawl of a Herculean task
