Stay ConnectedBill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, chats with experts from around the world to help us all get smarter about China. Topics discussed include politics, foreign relations, business, finance, culture, history and markets. It started as a podcast but is now video too.
Nearly 400,000 investors, policymakers, executives, analysts, diplomats, journalists, scholars and others read Sinocism for valuable insights into China.
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This is a recording from the September 4th live conversation I had with Professor Joseph Torigian about his excellent book on Xi Jinping’s father - The Party's Interests Come First - The Life of Xi Zhongxun, the importance of history to the Party, and to Xi Jinping, and how we might view the recent commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the “Victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War”.
On July 22nd I spoke with Finbarr Bermingham, Brussels-based senior correspondent for the South China Morning Post whose beat includes EU-China relations. He has in a roll with scoops about EU-China relations, including China tells EU it does not want to see Russia lose its war in Ukraine earlier this month.
He explains what to expect from the EU-China summit that convenes July 24th, and how EU-China relations have deteriorated over the last several months.
Apologies, we had some technical difficulties at the start and briefly a few minutes in.
He is active on Substack Notes Finbarr Bermingham
On Wednesday, July 3rd I hosted Robin J Brooks for a discussion about the RMB.
Robin is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and formerly Chief Economist at the IIF and Chief FX Strategist at Goldman Sachs. He writes an excellent and free Substack which I highly recommend.
Some of Robin’s views may be controversial to some, especially his argument that the PRC has more leverage over the US in the trade war because it was the very slight devaluation of the RMB against the USD just after the April 2nd tariff “Liberation Day” that was the proximate cause of the US bond market going “yippy”, which ultimately forced President Trump to back down. We had a good back and forth on that topic.
I learned a lot from the whole conversation and I think you will too. And if you enjoyed it please “like” it and restack it on Substack, and send to your friends and contacts.
Thanks for watching.
On Wednesday June 25th I hosted a discussion with Lisa Hanson and Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners about the China video game market and how Chinese game firms are going global
Thanks to everyone who joined the live discussion today.
This is a recording of a June 9th, 2025 Sinocism Live conversation with Tu Le, Founder and Managing Director of Sino Auto Insights.
We had a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the EV market in China, the recent BYD price cuts,Tesla’s China prospects, autonomous driving and the prospects for legacy car makers globally.
If you are interested in EVs, China and globally, you should sign up for the free weekly Sino Auto Insights newsletter.
Thanks.
I joined Jonathan V. Last on his show at The Bulwark to chat about China and the Trump Administration.
Thanks to everyone who joined the live discussion tonight.
This is a recording of a March 20th, 2025 Sinocism Live conversation with Jonathan Czin, now the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and before that was for many years at the CIA as one of the US intelligence community’s top China experts. He was director for China at the National Security Council from 2021 to 2023, where he staffed all of President Biden’s interactions with President Xi.
I learned a lot from Jonathan Czin in this conversation and I think you will too.
His recent work:
What Beijing wants from a US-China trade war - Brookings
Burying Deng: Xi Jinping and the Abnormalization of Chinese Politics - China Leadership Monitor
Thoughts on the political demise of Miao Hua - Brookings
Abetting competition, restraining Beijing: Recommendations for diplomacy toward China - Brookings
And his bio:
Jonathan A. Czin is joining the Brookings Institution as the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center. He is a former member of the Senior Analytic Service at CIA, where he was one of the intelligence community’s top China experts.
Czin led the intelligence community’s analysis of Chinese politics and policymaking, playing a central role in assessing and briefing senior policymakers on President Xi Jinping, his rise to power, and decisionmaking on an array of key issues and crises. From 2021 till 2023, he was director for China at the National Security Council, where he advised on, staffed, and coordinated White House and inter-agency diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China, including all of President Biden’s interactions with President Xi, and played a leading role in addressing a wide range of global China issues.
He also served as advisor for Asia-Pacific security affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and overseas at a CIA field station in Southeast Asia. Czin holds a master’s in international relations from Yale University, graduated magna cum laude from Haverford College, and studied at Oxford University. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.
I had a good conversation this afternoon with Chris Cillizza about what may happen in the next few hours with TikTok Us, and how President-elect may try to undo the ban. we also chatted a bit about what US-China relations may look like in the Trump 2.0 Era.
Join me for my next live video in the app.
Thanks to everyone who tuned in live to my Friday discussion with Christopher Johnson on China and the US election. Our talk was part of the ongoing Substack Election Dialogues.
Chris is President and CEO of China Strategies Group. He served for nearly two decades in the United States Government’s intelligence and foreign affairs communities. In addition to his work advising multinational corporations on their business and commercial strategies in China and greater East Asia, his insights on the Chinese leadership and on Beijing’s economic, commercial, foreign and security policies are regularly sought by senior Administration, Congressional, military, and foreign government officials. Chris also serves as a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.
The live videos are first available in the Substack app, and that is also where you can find me most days on Notes and in the Sinocism chat:
I hope you enjoy this discussion, let me know if you think I should do more.
Thanks
In this episode of the Sinocism Podcast Bill speaks with Tu Le, Founder and Managing Director of Sino Auto Insights. Tu recently attended the Shanghai Auto Show. We discuss the rise of China EVs both inside China and increasingly in other countries, and especially of BYD, why the legacy foreign auto manufacturers are struggling and will continue to struggle in China, and how “China EV Inc” will win share in many overseas markets. We also discuss Tesla’s positioning in the PRC and some if its challenges ahead, especially from BYD, both inside the PRC and in other markets around the world.Links:Sino Auto InsightsSino Auto Insights newsletterDoug DeMuro reviews the BYD Han:The BYD Song L:Transcript:[00:00:00] Bill: Welcome back to the Sinocism podcast. Today we're very lucky to have Tu Le to talk about the PRC auto industry. Tu is the founder and managing director of Sino Auto Insights. Tu recently relocated to Detroit after many years in Beijing. Tu and his team at Sino Auto Insights do advisory and market research work for companies and investors who want to understand the PRC auto industry and especially the rise of Made in China EVs. He also writes an excellent weekly newsletter and does a podcast and occasional or weekly, I think, , Twitter spaces. I will put links to those in the show notes. Tu, welcome and thanks for joining the podcast. Great to see you again.[00:00:36] Tu Le: Bill first. , thanks for having me. Last time we saw each other, I think we were at Central Park having a coffee at Jamaica Blue. That quite a few years ago.[00:00:47] Bill: Tu and I are old friends from, from Beijing. , so, and, and it's, it's good to see you and, , nice to have you, , back in the US and Detroit. , Detroit is home, right. But it's also a great place to be if you're working on the auto industry.[00:00:59] Tu Le: Yeah. It's kind of ground zero for what's happening in the EV and mobility space. So, so it's, it's a great time to be back.[00:01:05] Bill: I've been really wanting to get you on the podcast for a while and I got finally motivated to do so after reading, what you were talking about from the Shanghai Auto Show, which you were, you, you just came back from China, I think, like a week ago, right? You're there for Tu or three weeks, , and nice to be able to travel again, right?[00:01:21] Tu Le: Oh, man. It was, , it was kind of, , surreal because the last time I traveled internationally from China, we were just, we had bags packed and everything, so a little bit different.[00:01:35] Bill: Yeah, no, much, much better. , and I think, you know, the Shanghai Auto Show clearly rocked a lot of people's worlds, and so Tu is going help us understand what's going on, and that's why, you know. So I wanna start though, first with, if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in China, working in the audio industry and, and what your firm does.[00:01:54] Tu Le: Okay, sure. So, as you'd mentioned, I grew up in Detroit, actually in Pontiac, Michigan.. In my entire family, all eight of us have worked. In the automotive space, along with our significant others. And, my first job, actually out of undergrad at Michigan State University was working at GM where the recently canceled Bolt is manufactured.[00:02:16] Tu Le: After grad school I moved to Silicon Valley, worked there for about six, seven years., and I met a girl and chased her over to Beijing actually. So I quit my Silicon Valley job and what I thought was going be a three or four year commitment ended up being 13 years. I had moved to Shanghai, took a job with Ford in Lujiazui actually for about a year, and then moved back to Beijing due to some family stuff going on.[00:02:46] Tu Le: And, then I started freelance consulting and worked at a couple of Chinese e e e-commerce startups in Beijing. And then I got pulled over to do some freelance consulting because one of my, friends. Had found out that I had some automotive background and, you know, Mercedes, BMW and Audi, they're all located, and VW group are located in Beijing.[00:03:09] Tu Le: And so I started Sino Auto Insights because, you know, right around 2014, 2015, where, you know, at ParkView Green, Tesla had opened the first retail store for China. And so I really started seeing, a shift in what was going on in the space and, a lot of articles and a lot of bad takes. So I started the newsletter, started the consultancy, because of my experience in Detroit, Silicon Valley and China with startups.[00:03:37] Tu Le: It's been quite an adventure and we, what we do is we, , , , we're a management consultant consultancy that helps mobility companies enter markets, develop products, raise capital and build their brand and work with them to find customers. And so we were focused primarily in the China market, but now we've kind of expanded because China, EV Inc.[00:04:05] Tu Le: Has expanded. And with the Inflation Reduction Act, we've recently opened a Detroit office and are, are starting to help companies here expand into the EV space and the mobility space.[00:04:20] Bill: Oh, that's fascinating. And I just, just to your, like what you mentioned about the, Tesla dealership at, or the, the showroom at, at the phone call the Parkview Green. ,I actually, you know, we both, we lived near there. Our, my kids went to school next to it, I think years went to Fangcaido, right.[00:04:35] Tu Le: That's right, exactly. I live right next door,[00:04:37] Bill: you go.[00:04:38] Bill: Right. And so, and so I went there right after it opened with a friend with a, with a friend of mine from Henan who had like, he had a a, a couple of 730s and a BMW very, you know, had like cars had, could buy what he wanted. And it was really fascinating because he wanted to buy a model S right early on.[00:04:54] Bill: And he got in there and he's like, God, it's like, it's, it's just so bare bones that does not, you know, so he didn't buy it because he's just like, this is like, not this just, I wanted like a German luxury car.[00:05:06] Tu Le: and it was over $120,000[00:05:08] Bill: No, they were, they were quite expensive. I mean this was early, early days. Right. And obviously Tesla's done well since then, but it was just really interesting how when they entered the market, they were not at all focused on, I mean, they were, they were, they had a, a brand image, but actually inside the cars, the way they were appointed was not near what sort of Chinese luxury buyers were used[00:05:29] Tu Le: right, and, and I would venture to guess, your friend was probably a little bit older,[00:05:35] Bill: Hey. It was, it's like 40 at the time.[00:05:37] Tu Le: Okay. So he is pretty young because the digital natives, and, and we'll get into this a little bit later, but the digital natives are the ones that are really looking at the safety and the connected vehicle.[00:05:48] Bill: And the, and the screens that make it look like you're, like at a currency trading station, right.[00:05:52] Tu Le: oh, yo. Yeah.[00:05:53] Bill: I want to jump to something that you wrote in your, your latest, , newsletter, , which is excellent. Everyone subscribed to it. And I will link to it, as I said earlier.[00:06:04] Bill: , but the one, the one about the Shanghai Auto Show, so you wrote. In 20, 30, 50 years from now, we'll likely point to Aha Shanghai TW 2023 as that watershed moment. It's the moment most media outlets acknowledge that the foreign legacies that dominated the China auto market for the last 35 years or so have been overtaken and unable to compete with the EV products launched by China, EV, Inc.[00:06:31] Bill: Within just the last few years, the legacies haven't given up by any means, but the writing is on the wall. BYD overtook Volkswagen as China's best selling brand in, first quarter 2023, the first time it's ever happened, BYD has no plans of giving up that title for the foreseeable future and are likely only only going to pull away even further.[00:06:53] Bill: China will never be like it was again, where brand heritage and being foreign gave you an advantage.” So if you're a foreign auto manufacturer…the sense I got from talking to some people reading the media was the foreign, some of the foreign execs who went to the auto show were shocked.[00:07:16] Bill: And so like, like what do they do? And more importantly, how did they fall behind so quickly? Right? I mean, they have had massive operations in China for decades. Didn't they have a flow of information that helped them understand how the market was changing?[00:07:30] Tu Le: So there's a few different things going on here, Bill. I think that the fact that most executives outside of the top management haven't been able to travel to China in three and a half years really limited their ability to kind of see and feel the differences and the changes. I was in China for most of that three and a half years.[00:07:56] Tu Le: And I saw the proliferation of green plates over the last few years. ,[00:08:01] Bill: just to be clear green, green plates, or if you have an EV[00:08:05] Tu Le: Right. You and I lived in Beijing during the worst pollution days, and so it was kind of a necessary evil and what, what we'll likely see in India in the future, but that's another subject, and so for them to first be able to land in Shanghai as an international business, travel, see all the green plates from the fleet vehicles and the taxis and then all the way to the passenger vehicles when you get into Jing’An temple area and stuff like that, I think that really shocked them.[00:08:42] Tu Le: And then to go to the media days on Tuesday and Wednesday, the first days you could actually see, touch and feel the vehicles. You know, they, they close, they make that sound like German cars and the, the fit and finish is much, much better than it was 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago. And so you could always tell the European or German executives, because the uniform, they wear that suit with no tie, white shirt and[00:09:11] Bill: And tears streaking down their face.[00:09:14] Tu Le: So it was just an, it was an awestruck moment, but also what do we do? Like, how, how did they get so far ahead and, and how do we catch up? Because most executives, most automotive, traditional automotive executives have no idea about software and hardware, software integration. And so, and user experience, because most automotive companies, their products are product focused, whereas tech companies are user focused.[00:09:45] Tu Le: And in, in the high tech world, everything's an operating expense. In the traditional automotive sector, everything's a capital expense. And so how you think about financing your new products, it's completely different. And, you know, traditional automotive is just very slow, product life cycles of 5, 6, 7 years.[00:10:04] Tu Le: Whereas every tech product you get is new every 10 to 14 months. And so, , there, it's, it wasn't just that the products were higher quality, it, it was also the number of them and the number of competitors. And we've seen. a decline, a sharp decline over the last several years in GM sales in Volkswagen, group sales in Ford sales.[00:10:33] Tu Le: So they've seen this coming, but if we look at how Volkswagen and GM specifically, and Toyota, to a lesser extent have grown and become these global, number one, number Tu, number three automotive players. It's because of the China market. And, and they were making money hand over fist along with their JV partners.[00:10:56] Tu Le: So they, they had no incentive to disrupt themselves.[00:10:59] Bill: They were fat and happy,[00:11:01] Tu Le: Yeah. I want to give Tesla a decent amount of credit because you and I know about this catfish effect because in 2016, so, so Nio, Peng and Li Auto, those companies were established in about 2014, 2015. And they've been, they were struggling for quite some time.[00:11:21] Tu Le: Nio was close to bankruptcy.[00:11:23] Bill: they got rescued by that, provincial government. Right. Or[00:11:26] Tu Le: That's right. Hefei government. Yep. And so if you look at where the hockey stick starts, it's right around 2019. And guess what? Factory opened up in 2019. Exactly. It's exactly. So the first vehicle for the model three, the Made in China model three rolled off in December of 2019.[00:11:48] Tu Le: So Tesla should get a decent amount of credit for bringing a lot of attention to the Chinese EV sector, but also bringing the level of competition up. And that's where we're at currently. Because actually, if you look at the US and European markets, I would say Tesla is aggressively playing offense, but in the Chinese market, they're playing a little bit more defense with the price cuts.[00:12:11] Bill: Well, that, well, that's, so a couple things there. One is, , sort of, I guess the, the traditional carbon manufacturers were also, you know, a bit, been a bit to be, euphemistic behind the curve when it comes to Tesla outside of China. I just wonder though, I mean, I would imagine that the staff and the executives in China for these foreign firms would've been reporting about what was going on.[00:12:36] Bill: Is it just a case of like the, the foreign headquarters not wanting to listen to the local staff or not believing what they were being told, or they just couldn't do it culturally? They just couldn't, even if they understood intellectually, they just couldn't believe that this could be possible.[00:12:52] Tu Le: yes. You know, I think, I think all of the above. I think the speed at which everything changed and we're talking three and a half years effectively.[00:13:03] Bill: like one software update in an American car….[00:13:07] Tu Le: Yeah.[00:13:07] Bill: little facetious, but[00:13:09] Tu Le: And so, , you know, China's the largest, passenger vehicle market in the world. It has been since 2009. United States is a close, there's not, not a very close second, but their second place. But, again, if you are just printing money because of the brand logo on the front of your vehicle, you're not super incentivized to disrupt yourself.[00:13:38] Bill: So classic.[00:13:39] Tu Le: this came sneaking up. So, so I'd like to think that since I've been writing this newsletter for the last five or six years, I'd like to think I kind of saw it coming and I was kind of warning[00:13:51] Bill: and you did. And you, you did. And it was interesting because it just like, people really paying attention said this stuff is happening. But it's just now become this broader, like,oh my God, the Chinese EVs are like amazing. And they're going, they're dominating China and they're, they're coming overseas.[00:14:09] Tu Le: Yeah. And, if I'm being honest and frank, it is a lot of hubris. Like how could a Chinese EV company[00:14:16] Bill: arrogance. Just arrogance and, and, and no, and, and frankly just being patronizing, like you said. How, I mean, how could a Chinese company this, we saw this, right? I mean, you know, didn't we see this with Japanese and Korean cars too in the US[00:14:29] Tu Le: Yeah. Exactly. And you know that when we were living there in 20 10, 20 11, you got into a BYD car. You didn't feel safe. It wasn't very nice. And you're going talk about this later, but you know, there are western car reviewers, Sandy Munro, and Doug DeMuro. Two of them that really think that BYD is building quality products.[00:14:56] Tu Le: Can they be improved? Of course they can, but they're globally competitive right now. We can talk about that a little bit later. But BYD, the other thing that I think is really…
Full show notes at the publisher
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