China's automakers closed 2025 with output of 34.53 million vehicles, the 17th straight year the country has been the world's largest car producer. New-energy vehicles – the umbrella term used in China for battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell cars – accounted for 16.63 million units, an 11th consecutive year at the top, according to a retrospective published by Chinese tech outlet Huxiu.
The numbers cap an arc that began in 1953, when construction started on First Automobile Works (FAW) on the outskirts of Changchun. Three years later, the first 12 Jiefang CA10 trucks rolled off the line, ending China's inability to mass-produce vehicles. In 1954, Mao Zedong listed what the country could not yet make: cars, aircraft, tanks and tractors. The truck, based on Soviet technology, was the first product to tie China's steel, casting, machine-tool, bearing, tyre, electrical and glass sectors into a single system.
The system grew through state-planned projects, then through reform-era market forces. FAW formed a joint venture with Volkswagen in 1991; rural factories such as Wanxiang, which began making universal joints in 1969 and entered the U.S. market in 1984, became private-sector exporters. Huxiu argues that what emerged is not a single champion but an industrial web: in the Yangtze River Delta, an EV maker can source batteries, motors, electronic controls, die-cast bodies, infotainment screens, LiDAR and seat fabric within a few hours' drive, usually from multiple suppliers. In the Pearl River Delta, a new product can go from drawing, prototyping, tooling to mass production in a few weeks, and an industrial internet now covers all 41 major industrial sectors.
From localisation to exports
The Tesla plant in Shanghai shows how dense the web has become. Opened in 2019, the factory delivered its first China-made Model 3 about 10 months after breaking ground. At launch, local content was roughly 30%; today it is more than 95%. More than 400 Chinese tier-one suppliers work with the plant, and over 60 have joined Tesla's global supply chain. In July 2026, a car carrier at Shanghai's Nangang port loaded 7,738 Shanghai-built Teslas bound for Zeebrugge, Belgium – a record for a single voyage from a Chinese port.
The domestic industry is also moving upmarket. Hongqi, the FAW premium brand long reserved for state ceremonies, sold more than 460,000 cars in 2025 – its eighth consecutive year of growth – with cumulative customers above 2 million. Hongqi's 2018 relaunch, Huxiu notes, mirrors China's broader shift from cheap assembly to higher-value manufacturing.
Exports underline the change: China shipped 7.098 million vehicles in 2025, the third straight year it has been the world's largest car exporter. Beyond vehicles, China exported 20.6% more specialised equipment and 21.5% more high-end machine tools in 2025, and industrial robot exports rose 48.7%, making the country a net exporter of robots for the first time.
Scale as technology
Huxiu credits 'scale as technology': every extra million units of output improves yields, processes and supplier maturity. China's manufacturing value-added reached 34.7 trillion yuan in 2025 – the 16th consecutive year it has ranked first globally, according to World Bank figures cited by Huxiu. Total R&D spending reached 3.93 trillion yuan (about $553 billion) in 2025, or 2.8% of GDP, passing the OECD average for the first time. High-tech manufacturing's share of value-added output rose from 9.4% in 2012 to 17.1% in 2025.
The manufacturing base is reinforced by a vast engineering workforce, with China graduating more science and engineering students than any other country. Behind the headline numbers sit the unglamorous 'capillary' firms: more than 140,000 'specialised and innovative' small and medium enterprises have been cultivated, many producing a single sealing material or control programme that an entire supply chain depends on.
The arc, Huxiu concludes, shows that China's strength is not that it can make everything, but that it can make almost anything in high volume at falling cost. As Huxiu puts it, no single point is the strongest, but the network is. 'Doing one is a skill; doing a million identical ones is industry.' The car is the clearest proof: buried under the 34.5 million vehicles produced in 2025 is a system 77 years in the making.
