Comment by alecco
1 day ago
> Source: company statements
Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars in public parking lots: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/byd-australia-accused-...
And BYD sits on a pile of debt they use to pay suppliers expecting ever-increasing sales (Evergrande business model). https://medium.com/@davidsehyeonbaek/a-deep-dive-into-byds-s...
BYD owns their own fleet of car carriers for export, with the capacity to have ~30k vehicles shipping to other markets at any one time on their vessels. From this piece:
> BYD Deliveries outside of China hit 1.05 million in 2025. The company has set a goal to expand overseas sales to between 1.5 million to 1.6 million units in 2026, according to a Citigroup Inc. report in November that cited a meeting with BYD management.
Edit: The debt is irrelevant, China isn’t America. They’ll nationalize and inflate away any institutional debt or wipe it out, but still have a third of the world’s manufacturing capacity. Tesla exists on vibes, Chinese EV makers build, for example. jmyeet’s comment mostly nails this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424124 (citations)
(global light vehicle TAM is ~90M units/year, and Chinese EV automakers are going to soak the market with their production capacity)
China has a huge deflation problem that they export to the world via cheap products. They have a lot of capacity and not enough consumers. So in China, an unstated mild Keynesian approach makes sense. They can sweep debt under the rug and take in inflation from net debtor countries
Which on the one hand is great because through that China exports material wealth to the world.
At the same time production capacity outside of China has to compete with this "rigged" system, which is near impossible to do.
Falling prices, sounds like the way things should be as real technology and markets develop. Inflation is not natural.
Only a capitalist high on stocks can convince you that falling prices are bad. I, for one, welcome these falling prices. I thought inflation was the problem?
> They’ll nationalize and inflate away any institutional debt or wipe it out
This is just the reverse, actually, China isn’t afraid to go so far as to jail CEOs. There is no such thing as too big to fail in China, and all the Chinese domestic companies know it. The bailout playbook is a western thing.
China has been performing debt swaps with local governments to clean up their balance sheets [1], so used as an example. Agree with all of your comment. People make the mistake that China plays by artificial US capital market rules around profit and debt; they do not. They optimize for physical world success, not line go up.
[1] Why China Is Hoping $1.6 Trillion Can Fix Its Hidden Debt Problem - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-16/china-eco... | https://archive.today/HsaHV - April 16th, 2025
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They only jail the people that upset the regime.
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They have $5.6B in debt, around the same as Mazda and Polestar and roughly half Tesla's $13B.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/automakers-with-th...
And vast parking lots full of cars isn't dumping, it where they put them before sending them to dealers:
> its parking areas are still brimming with new BYDs fresh from arriving at nearby Port Kembla ahead of their delivery to BYD dealers.
A car transport holds thousands of ships. Therefore requiring temporary storage for thousands of cars is normal.
Even if you count the massive "hidden debt", BYD's debt load is still a small fraction of the big car makers, many of whom hold over $200 billion in debt.
Which car makers? Ford, GMC, Chevrolet are all closer to $100 billion. Tesla holds $13b.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/automakers-with-th...
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Dumping notwithstanding, BYD is still selling cars into the Australian market in enormous numbers. Four of the top ten EVs sold this year are BYD, as are the top two PHEVs.
If you account for the fact that Australian market Teslas are built in China, then China is producing 8 of the top 10 EVs.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/australias-best-selling-cars-b...
Which is direct evidence for what would happen if they were allowed to sell fairly into the US and Europe. The future of cars is Chinese, the US automakers can’t survive on protectionism forever
Not that I am for it, but why not? If no other cars enter the market, or they're forced to be uncompetitive, then what choice would consumers have?
A friend of mine works in the chemical industry in Europe. One reason European producers are currently facing challenges is that Chinese producers are dumping chemicals into the global market at heavy discounts.
The underlying cause of this is that the Chinese housing market, which previously absorbed almost all chemicals, has effectively stalled (Evergrande, et al.).
I wonder whether we're observing a similar effect in the automobile industry as well.
Yes, but causality is backwards: the Chinese housing market stalled because China took the debt punch-bowl away from housing and gave it to the industrial sector.
It's also worth mentioning that loan subsidies play a bigger role in Chinese capital markets: Chinese industry is largely capitalized with state debt rather than private debt/equity or public markets. Zooming out, as a response to Trump's 1st term tariffs China went on a big autarky push by redirecting its citizens' and companies' deposits into a loan bazooka for the industrial sector. We are now seeing the fruits of that. The big questions have to do with (true) profitability and (true) balance sheets: can the new industries service their debts well enough for the government to hold face?
Are they actually dumping, or extraction/refinement of materials is actually much cheaper in China, so it feels like dumping?
Frankly, I don’t mind it, because western companies should also engage in this behaviour, if they can. Sell physical items for cheaper than it takes to produce them! They’re doing it with services and etc. anyways, might as well do it with physical products too.
How is extraction/refinement of materials much cheaper in China?
I have been told they are reaching wage parity with the west, so not labor cost.
Reuters agrees with op: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-goods-dumping-st...
Dumping notwithstanding, they're still selling cars into the Australian market in enormous numbers. Four of the top ten EVs sold this year are BYD, as are the top two PHEVs.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/australias-best-selling-cars-b...
regarding: "Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars in public parking lots" Sure you can post a speculative article, but this link is far more informative. https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/byd-car-park-mystery-s...
It doesn't really appear to be anything of grand significance.
Also their abysmal human rights record
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
It seems that BYD are storing cars improperly but there’s nothing in the first link about financial engineering.
You write and I quote: "Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars" Your own link to proof your quote says: "Hundreds of cars alleged to be illegally stored at a NSW fun park"