A common explanation for China’s manufacturing rise is the decades of integration with the US economy and entry to the World Trade Organization. On Tuesday, Financial Times reported that monthly Chinese passenger car exports crossed the one million mark by volume for the first time in June. “Shipments of cars rose 71.2 per cent from a year earlier to 1.06mn, putting the country on track to export more than 10mn cars this year, up from 7.1mn last year and more than double the 4.9mn in 2023”, the report said. China became the world’s largest car exporter in 2023, according to an earlier FT report.People visit the BYD booth at the Beijing Auto Show. (AFP)Global commentary on Chinese car export boom has largely focused on its impact on European manufacturers. Volkswagen, for example, has announced plans to cut 100,000 jobs globally. What is less widely recognised is that India and China used to be peers in car exports until just about a decade ago. Here are three charts about the rise and rise of Chinese car exports which should trigger some introspection in Indian industry.Post-Covid surge in Chinese car exports (and a question for India) China still trails Germany in value, even as it dominates in volumeData from the International Trade Center, a joint agency of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, shows that China’s car exports share has risen dramatically in the 2020s. Until 2025, China’s global share in car exports was almost seven percentage points below Germany and just above Japan’s. “Using data from the European Commission and categorizing EVs sold in Europe by size/segment, we find that as of 2023 Chinese EVs in Europe were selling for about 20 per cent less than similar models made by European manufacturers”, a 2024 IMF Working paper had found. For perspective, India and China were still peers in global car exports by value just before the pandemic.China’s EV might premium is yet to show in its car export performanceHS code data (870380 for EVs and 8703 for all passenger cars) shows that electric vehicles, despite rapid growth, still account for a minority of China’s overall car exports by value. Their share, however, has risen sharply-- from almost nothing in 2020 to more than one-third by 2025. China now commands close to one-fourth of the global EV exports by value, while non-EV export share is still less than 10%. Global share of EV exports in total car exports has crossed 15% from just about 1% in 2017.China’s EV export boom has happened without the aid of US markets A common explanation for China’s manufacturing rise is the decades of integration with the US economy and entry to the World Trade Organization that opened vast export opportunities. That remains true. Yet one striking feature of China’s automobiles export surge is that it happened despite limited access to the US market. Data from the International Energy Agency shows that the Chinese dominance in EV exports has come primarily from Europe and Asia.What does all this mean for India? India’s manufacturing underperformance is often attributed to delayed economic reforms. The automobile sector, however, has long been one of the country’s notable manufacturing successes, supported by a large and growing domestic market. That helped India remain broadly comparable with China in auto exports until about a decade ago. China’s subsequent leap appears to reflect technological innovation spilling across industries. For instance, BYD, China’s leading EV manufacturer, began as a battery company.