Jia Ke Dialogues with Chen Binbo: Seeing Clearly, Accepting Boundaries, and Coexisting with Change

Written by | Zhang Nan

Edited by | Huang Dalu

Designed by | Zhen Youmei

Chen Binbo, President of the Wuhan Automobile Industry Association and a senior Chinese automotive executive.

In 1987, he entered the Second Automobile Works, experiencing success at Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën, Fengshen, Dongfeng Nissan, Dongfeng Honda, Minth Group, and Farasis Energy.

His nearly forty-year career spans industrial policy, complete vehicle manufacturing, marketing, global parts, and power batteries. He has witnessed the Chinese automotive industry evolve from planned management and joint venture introduction to independent rise and new energy transition.

On October 14, 2026, in the 20th Anniversary JackTok Special Dialogue 13th Talk of "Automotive Business Review", the two of them looked back on Chen Binbo's career over two hours, and also discussed current issues such as joint venture retreat, price wars, industry cleansing, supply chain globalization, and power battery competition.

Why do choices that were once correct fail as market, technology, and organizational conditions change? When old experience is no longer the standard answer, how does an executive see clearly, accept boundaries, and find their place again amidst change?

The "50 Golden Quotes from Chen Binbo Interview" published with this article are categorized around themes of industrial changes, rise and fall of joint ventures, manufacturing efficiency, industry cleansing, corporate globalization, power batteries, and career choices.

Chen Binbo's WeChat name is "Go Forward Unceasingly". However, the forward movement he understands is not always rushing in the same direction, but still willing to relearn and adjust position after conditions change and old answers fail, continuing to do things that can create value.

Coexisting with change is sometimes not about persisting harder in the original methods, but about moving forward again after seeing the boundaries.

"Is it retirement time now?" At the beginning of the live stream, Jia Ke asked what seemed like a simple question.

Chen Binbo paused for a moment and said, "Not yet fully retired". He works at the industry association, serves as an independent director for several publicly listed companies, and acts as an advisor for enterprises. There are still arrangements every day, just no longer carrying sales and profit indicators.

His WeChat name is "Go Forward Unceasingly". This name easily brings to mind will, speed, and career peaks.

But on October 14, 2026, in the 14th Talk of the "Automotive Business Review" 20th Anniversary JackTok Special Dialogue, the two really talked about how an automotive person admits the environment has changed and rearranges themselves amidst change.

Chen Binbo was born in 1964. He entered the Second Automobile Works (today's Dongfeng Motor) after graduating with a master's degree in 1987, later experienced Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën, Fengshen, Dongfeng Nissan and Dongfeng Honda, and then entered Minth Group and Farasis Energy.

For nearly four decades, he went from industrial policy, investment, and organizational construction to marketing and corporate management, then from complete vehicles to parts and power batteries. The companies in his resume changed constantly, and roles changed constantly. The only thing that didn't change is that he always defined himself as an executive.

What he talked about most was not a specific position, but the conditions when each decision was made: what kind of automotive industry did the country need, did the enterprise have money, could the market digest capacity, how to establish real advantages in overseas factories, and whether battery enterprises had scale support. Conditions changed, answers had to be rewritten.

This conversation also had a layer of personal background.

Around the time "Automotive Business Review" was founded in 2006, the two were already acquaintances. Chen Binbo participated in the magazine's early activities and gave advice on publishing.

Twenty years later, Jia Ke re-found old friends with "20 industry participants, 20 annual keywords, 20 conversations that did not avoid success and failure".

First Understand How a Large Enterprise Operates

In 1987, Dongfeng was still called Second Automobile Works by many.

Chen Binbo entered the Policy Research Office and Management Research Institute, writing reports for company leadership, conducting surveys, and also representing the headquarters to go down to professional factories to understand problems.

For a young person just starting work, this position allowed him to see early on how a large state-owned enterprise organized production and distributed interests, and how systems entered the daily operation of factories.

At that time, Dongfeng's commercial vehicles were in short supply, ranking high among national industrial enterprises. Changes brought by reform and opening up were happening in the factory area. The "Three Comprehensive Contract Responsibility System" decomposed quality, technical progress, and economic benefits into professional factories, workshops, and employees. Internal transfer pricing determined the operating results of different units. Professional factories welcomed researchers, not because they liked writing reports, but because they hoped the headquarters would see problems in raw material linkage, internal settlement, and responsibility division.

The so-called "Three Comprehensive" referred to comprehensive quality management as the foundation, comprehensive technical progress as the core, and comprehensive economic benefits as the goal.

Responsibilities were decomposed layer by layer, and the supporting slogan was "Every burden carried in layers, every person has an indicator". In today's view, this language carries a distinct era imprint; at that time, it tried to push a large factory from administrative management to operational responsibility.

Dongfeng also began to study line-function systems and divisional systems.

In his twenties, Chen Binbo lectured to hundreds of department heads about Sloan and General Motors' organizational methods. Looking back today, those concepts were not new; placed at the scene of the transition from planned economy to market economy, they represented a company beginning to treat subsidiaries as units capable of independent operation.

Later, Dongfeng formed multiple sectors, and this early reform provided the organizational source.

Jia Ke said that the simulated cost accounting discussed repeatedly in those years sounded almost childish today. Chen Binbo's answer was "seeming like a world apart".

He did not mock that era. For him, it was precisely these seemingly basic attempts that allowed a generation of automotive people to first learn how to understand cost, efficiency, and market outside of planning.

This experience also shaped his work habits. He did not understand management as a set of slogans that could be copied everywhere.

Organizational plans had to be put into specific enterprises, internal prices had to be tested by material costs, and reform had to answer why the grassroots were willing to cooperate. Later, whether doing complete vehicles, parts, or batteries, he was accustomed to first decomposing the system to find the conditions that truly limited results.

Shenlong's Grand Start and Market Reality

At the end of 1988, Chen Binbo entered the Dongfeng Sedan Project Preparation Office.

Whether China should develop the sedan industry on a large scale had just moved from debate to national decision. Dongfeng needed to enter passenger cars from commercial vehicles and also had to make choices among cooperation partners such as General Motors, Volkswagen, Citroën, and Toyota.

He remembered there was a demonstration meeting before the decision on whether China should mass-produce sedans.

The debate at the time was summarized into big issues like "Socialism or Capitalism". Later, the industrial pattern of "Three Big, Three Small, Two Micros" gradually took shape. Sedan projects were not something an enterprise could do just by saying yes, but had to meet conditions such as national industrial layout, foreign exchange, credit, technology introduction, and production capacity scale simultaneously.

According to Chen Binbo's recollection, the national government put forward requirements for high starting points, large batches, specialization, export orientation, import substitution, etc., with a planned scale of 300,000 vehicles.

Toyota was more inclined to start with SKD assembly, and General Motors proposed a 37,500-vehicle pilot plant, both difficult to meet approval requirements.

Citroën was willing to introduce the then newer ZX model, accept the scale plan, and the French government and banks could provide long-term low-interest credit. Dongfeng's final choice of Citroën was not just model preference, but the combined action of a set of industrial policies, capital conditions, and negotiation results.

From a national strategy perspective, building a large-scale modern sedan industry had its necessity. Putting it on the enterprise, the problem immediately became specific: the market was not that big yet, what if products could not be sold?

Chen Binbo later compared Shenlong with Dongfeng Honda. Shenlong carried large-scale investment from the beginning; Dongfeng Honda started with smaller capacity and expanded constantly according to the market.

The former reflected top-level design, the latter obeyed the market pace. Both logics could explain their rationality and had to bear their respective costs.

Shenlong Phase 1 planned for 150,000 vehicles, with a final goal of 300,000 vehicles.

Chen Binbo remembered, the first factory occupied over 2,000 mu of land, with a wall of about 5 kilometers, and investment exceeding 10 billion yuan. The country hoped to establish complete capabilities in one step, while the enterprise had to carry land, factory buildings, equipment, and localization systems before the market matured. This tension existed from the beginning of the project.

In 1992, Shenlong was established, and Chen Binbo became one of the earliest employees. He first did policies and regulations and public relations, later participated in planning and construction of Shenlong Industrial Development General Company. Chankou was still rice fields and villages at the time.

To build a factory, employee housing, schools, hospitals, sales services, and parts support had to be solved simultaneously. On the surface, this was opposite to the reform direction of state-owned enterprises "enterprises running society"; but on a land without city functions, the factory had no other choice.

Localization requirements pushed the team to establish supporting enterprises such as stamping and brake lines, and negotiate cooperation with French, Japanese, South Korean, German, American, and British companies.

Today's Dongfeng Hongtai can be traced back to these early attempts. What Chen Binbo learned here was not just how to build a car, but how to build a modern automotive industrial system starting from land, funds, living facilities, and supply chains.

Around 1994, the industrial development company he participated in also tried to package downstream parts enterprises into the capital market.

At that time, it was not called formal listing, but first went to the Wuhan counter trading system "listing on counters". Sales service, industrial support, real estate, hospitals, schools, and kindergartens were all packed into the same organization. It looked like fuzzy boundaries, but corresponded to the problems that had to be solved simultaneously from nothing to something for a new industrial city.

This system soon encountered market reality. In the late 1990s, Dongfeng's commercial vehicles had a "lack of heavy and short of light", and the market for traditional five-ton medium trucks contracted; Shenlong's sales also did not reach the planned capacity, and the two-door Fukang still faced a market dominated by official cars and three-door sedans.

Years later, the location of Shenlong's first factory became an urban development project. When Jia Ke mentioned factory changes, Chen Binbo was not sentimental, only saying that place was already building a new center. The space left by the industry would also be re-used by the next round of urban life.

"Lack of heavy and short of light" was one of the core difficulties of Dongfeng at the time. After road conditions improved, the five-ton medium trucks that originally had advantages were squeezed at both ends by heavy trucks and light trucks; Cummins and Xiangyang bases had not yet formed enough support, and Shenlong still needed investment.

Parent companies and joint venture projects were under pressure at the same time, and state-owned enterprise difficulty relief and layoff waves also occurred in the same period. Chen Binbo's later understanding of industry cycles came largely from this unsmooth experience.

How to Build a Company When Having Nothing

In May 2000, Chen Binbo left Shenlong and went south to participate in the Fengshen project. Dongfeng was in a difficult period, had approved new sedan projects, but had no money to build complete factories.

Shenzhen Fengshen's registered capital was only 130 million yuan, with Dongfeng contributing 60%, corresponding to 78 million yuan.

Chen Binbo recalled that this money was not easy to get: the team mortgaged the Dongfeng Building in Shenzhen to borrow 50 million yuan, and the rest was made up with a stack of acceptance bills.

This project did not appear suddenly.

After Guangzhou Peugeot withdrew, Honda entered the Guangzhou complete vehicle project, and Dongfeng played an important role in it but did not directly obtain complete vehicle rights.

Dongfeng and Honda first established an engine parts company in Huizhou, with products sold back to Japan, and later promoted an engine company. The "three-step jump" of parts, engines, and complete vehicles became a path for the Dongfeng Southern team to find new passenger vehicle projects.

At the same time, Dongfeng also cooperated with Yulon to produce Nissan Bluebird, forming another line for Fengshen.

Without its own production base, Fengshen bound R&D with Taiwan Yulon, controlled sales by itself, and commissioned manufacturing to Guangzhou Jing'an Yunbao and Xiangfan factories.

Chen Binbo summarized this state as "having nothing". It was not rhetoric in entrepreneurial stories, but reality on the balance sheet: limited funds could only be placed in links that determined products and markets, and intermediate manufacturing relied on external resources first.

One of his main tasks was to complete the restructuring of Jing'an Yunbao. The company originally belonged to the public security system, the craftsmanship was not complete, but it undertook Fengshen Bluebird production. Restructuring lasted from 2000 to 2002, Nissan subsequently entered, and Dongfeng and Nissan's cooperation obtained a foundation that could continue to expand.

To prevent restructuring failure, the team also inspected Wuhan Wantong and other alternative factories. Every alternative path pointed to the same question: without a production base, the project would terminate.

Jing'an Yunbao originally approached a complete vehicle assembly point, lacking complete craftsmanship such as stamping. Before further investment, equity, debt, land, and production qualifications had to be straightened out.

Chen Binbo spent a whole two years processing restructuring. Later, Nissan's "Golden Triangle Plan" could be implemented, precisely because the production base had become an asset that could be entered.

In 2003, Dongfeng Nissan was established, and the first year was not smooth.

2004 experienced a low point, in 2005, the Sino-Japanese sides re-honed through a "Common Program", and Altima, Sylphy, and Tiida gradually opened the market.

By the time "Automotive Business Review" was founded in 2006, Dongfeng Nissan had entered a relatively smooth development stage. Chen Binbo also first moved from investment, policy, and planning into a complete marketing system.

This experience made him see that corporate capability was not always having a factory first, then a product, and finally a market.

When resources were scarce, enterprises could also first master R&D and sales, organize manufacturing; after conditions matured, assets could be supplemented. More than twenty years later, the Chinese automotive industry discussed asset-light, OEM, and ecosystem collaboration again, and these methods had been practiced in Fengshen's difficulties at the time.

Therefore, he did not understand "entrepreneurship" only as personal investment to establish a company. Fengshen had no founder myth, but had a typical entrepreneurial situation: resources were extremely scarce, the organization had not yet formed, and any restructuring failure could terminate the project. Executives also had to find money, factories, and partners in uncertainty and be responsible for failure.

Capacity Experiment on the Peak

In 2010, Chen Binbo took office as Executive Deputy General Manager of Dongfeng Honda. The Chinese passenger vehicle market was still growing, and Honda's products were also in the mainstream. The problem in front of him was not lack of demand, but capacity could not keep up.

Honda was used to small-step capacity expansion to reduce investment risk.

The other side Chen Binbo saw was that every renovation would interrupt production rhythm, increase costs, and might also miss the market window. After he took office, he promoted first factory capacity expansion and second factory construction, and later started the third factory.

What really interested Honda Headquarters was not how many more factories to build, but how the Wuhan team pushed the limits of existing factories outward.

In 2017, the standard capacity of Dongfeng Honda's two factories totaled 480,000 vehicles, and sales that year reached 720,000 vehicles.

The team compared four shifts, three rotations, and two-shift extended production, and finally introduced "multi-skilled workers" who could rotate multiple positions under the premise of meeting regulations and overtime hour requirements.

In Wuhan mahjong, this kind of person was vividly called "Joker": wherever people were needed, they filled in. Employees learned one more position, and wages increased accordingly; production teams gained rest and scheduling space, and equipment also kept maintenance time.

This arrangement was not simply lengthening working hours.

Dongfeng Honda had been inspected by Honda due to overtime hours, and the plan had to meet regulatory requirements such as overtime not exceeding 36 hours per month. The team extended single-shift effective working time to 10.5 hours during peak hours, totaling about 21 hours for two shifts, leaving the remaining time for equipment inspection and handover; at the same time, employees had weekly rest through rotating rest.

Multi-skilled workers received corresponding subsidies for learning each position, and teams no longer relied on specific individuals to stay fixed at workstations.

Honda executives responsible for manufacturing came to the Wuhan site twice to check, worrying that high-load operation would damage quality. Finally, this method was considered to have promotion value. Chen Binbo judged based on this that Dongfeng Honda could support a limit capacity of nearly 1 million vehicles with three factories, and there was no need to build a fourth factory.

According to his calculation, a factory with a single-standard capacity of 240,000 vehicles could reach 320,000 vehicles or even higher after adjusting cycle time, equipment, and working hours.

In 2017, the two factories produced 360,000 vehicles on average each, equivalent to releasing nearly one factory's capacity without adding complete factories. Japanese Honda initially did not believe it, and the manufacturing person in charge came to Wuhan twice, focusing on checking quality control and site load, before finally accepting this method.

When the third factory started, the team had already reserved conditions for hybrid and future pure electric production. Chen Binbo believed that three factories were enough to cover Dongfeng Honda's limit of nearly 1 million vehicles. When Jia Ke said "Glad we didn't build the fourth factory", he did not continue to evaluate it. After leaving, market and investment decisions were no longer his responsibility.

Standing at that time, this was an efficiency innovation; standing today, it also looks like a slice left by the peak of joint venture automobiles. When demand was strong, managers worried about how to build 200,000 more vehicles. Less than ten years later, the industry faced idle capacity, price declines, and channel losses. Success experiences were not wrong, but the market on which they relied had disappeared.

Joint Venture Retreat is Only Part of Reshuffling

Public data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that the share of joint venture brands in the Chinese passenger vehicle market dropped from 61.6% in 2014 to 31.5% in 2024.

In the same period, new energy vehicles expanded rapidly, and price wars spread from complete vehicles to dealers and supply chains. Chen Binbo admitted he did not expect the decline of joint venture enterprises to be so rapid. Those enterprises that once reached or approached millions or two millions of units seemed solid enough at one time.

But he was not willing to explain joint venture retreat as a simple win or loss.

Joint venture enterprises cultivated a large number of manufacturing, R&D, and marketing talents for China's automotive industry. In the teams of Chinese brands such as BYD, Geely, and Chery today, people trained by the joint venture system can still be seen. Market status can decline, capability transfer has already occurred.

He was more willing to explain the next stage of the automobile industry using the home appliance industry.

Around 2000, the color TV price war dragged the home appliance industry into industry-wide losses and forced many enterprises to exit. After long-term integration, the market concentrated in a few enterprises such as Gree, Midea, Haier, Hisense, and TCL, and top companies re-gained more stable profits.

The automotive industry is experiencing similar supply and demand imbalance, but assets are heavier, employment and local economic ties are deeper, and cleansing is more complex.

In his review, when Changhong started the price war, it had scale and upstream color tube resources, hoping to clean up the house with low prices. As a result, technology route changes hurt itself first and also made the entire industry pay the price of profits.

The meaning of this case for the automotive industry is not to prove that price wars must be won by anyone, but to show that when supply is over, top enterprises may also be seriously injured in the process of cleaning the market.

In Chen Binbo's view, joint venture brands will not disappear completely, and Volkswagen, Toyota, etc., may still remain, and the market needs diversity; but the original high share of the joint venture era will not naturally return. The bigger question is how many players are left on the table. He judged that the market will undergo major changes in the next two to three years, and the elimination rate of complete vehicle enterprises may be much higher than that of power battery enterprises.

If one must give the remaining quantity of joint venture enterprises, he gave a judgment of three to five families in the interview. This number was not an exact prediction, but his intuition of concentration in mature industries. Will Volkswagen and Toyota leave China? He thought not. Whether other brands can remain depends on whether products, costs, and local R&D can adapt to the Chinese market again.

This was not a relaxed industry prophecy.

In 2025, multiple departments publicly opposed disorderly price wars, and the sales profit margin of the automotive industry continued to bear pressure; at the circulation end, dealer price inversions and store losses were even more common. Chen Binbo said, "Ducks are the first to know when the river water warms", the dealers who felt the cold first, and then the pressure will continue to transmit to parts and complete vehicle factories.

The attitude of local governments was also changing. In the past, a complete vehicle enterprise often drove tax revenue, employment, and industrial park investment, and there was motivation to continue support; now fiscal pressure has increased, and long-term underwriting ability has weakened.

There were still frictions between the unified national market, enterprise closures, mergers, and transfers, and local interests, but Chen Binbo judged that local constraint changes would speed up cleansing, not continue to delay indefinitely.

He emphasized that the market does not distribute victory according to enterprise nature.

Joint ventures, SOEs, private enterprises, and sole proprietorships are all on the same table. Winning a round today does not mean winning forever. The joint venture peak of the past thirty years will not automatically protect any company, and the current leading of Chinese brands is also not the final outcome.

Before Taking Chinese Experience Out

After leaving the Dongfeng system in 2018, Chen Binbo entered Minth Group and later served as the group's Chief Executive Officer.

Minth produced door frames, trim strips, etc. Single products were not eye-catching, but had already followed global customers in layout in Europe, Americas, and Asia. When Chen Binbo entered the company, about four to five percent of revenue came from overseas. He hoped to further increase the proportion of overseas revenue, making the enterprise's sales structure closer to the global automotive market.

Chen Binbo recalled, when Minth's annual sales revenue exceeded 10 billion yuan, the annual output of various trim strips and related parts reached hundreds of millions of pieces; there were more than 80 million cars produced worldwide in a year, of which about 30 million used Minth parts.

Products looked traditional, but the moat came from materials, craftsmanship, customer certification, and a global delivery network close to complete vehicle factories.

This turn changed his observation position.

In joint venture complete vehicle enterprises, Chinese teams long received technical support from multinational companies; at Minth, a Chinese parts enterprise had to output products, engineering, and manufacturing capabilities to global customers, and the direction was reversed.

Chinese automobiles moved from "market for technology" to supply chain globalization, also compressed into a change in an executive's position.

Globalization does not equal copying domestic factories to overseas. Chen Binbo remembered, one Minth factory in Germany had an annual sales revenue of about 40 million euros, but lost 15 million euros in one year.

Producing with local employees, local equipment, and local systems, what made the enterprise perform better than local competitors? If relying only on Chinese low labor costs and long working hours, the answer did not exist overseas at all.

Differences would appear directly in daily life. He cited the example of a Mexico factory: after a major festival, maybe one-third of employees did not come to work. Managers could not simply attribute this phenomenon to employees "not diligent", nor could they forcibly replace local life with Chinese factory schedules. Planning, automation level, position redundancy, and delivery promises had to be redesigned according to local reality.

He re-understood Minth's overseas system as a division of labor.

The European manufacturing center was placed in Serbia, the American center in Mexico, and China retained core capabilities such as R&D, product engineering, and manufacturing processes; factories in UK, Germany, France, etc., close to customers undertook assembly, warehousing, and rapid response. Overseas factories increased automation, used the efficiency of Chinese engineers and R&D systems to empower, instead of requiring local employees to copy Chinese work methods.

After Brexit, Minth invested in an aluminum door frame project for Nissan's UK factory.

Chen Binbo advocated making the process route as simple as possible: complex machining was placed in Serbia, and the UK only did assembly and delivery close to customers.

The German loss factory was also not simply closed, but retained necessary assembly and warehousing. Front-end factories were close to customers, regional centers undertook scale manufacturing, and the China headquarters mastered R&D and processes, which was his understanding of the global network.

Minth had already accumulated years in Germany, Thailand, Mexico, and the United States, Chen Binbo also participated in promoting the Serbia factory. He summarized these experiences as "more lessons, less experience". The most dangerous time for going overseas was often not when enterprises knew nothing, but thought domestic was already successful, and overseas only needed to copy.

He explained localization with seeds and soil: when a seed fell on another piece of land, it had to take root in the climate there, and could not require soil to change according to the original environment.

This judgment also applied to today's Chinese complete vehicle enterprises going overseas. Localization requirements proposed by Europe, ASEAN, and other markets were not unexpected, and China used localization thresholds the same when developing the automotive industry. The real question is whether enterprises can rebuild value chains within constraints and explain what capabilities they have that are irreplaceable locally.

Relearning After Entering Power Batteries

In 2023, Chen Binbo took office as General Manager of Farasis Energy and resigned in 2024. The term was not long, but it made a manager who had worked in the automotive industry for more than thirty years become a student again.

He originally thought that managing battery manufacturing and managing complete vehicle factories would not have fundamental differences. After truly entering the production line, he found that mechanical machining and chemical production followed different logics. Machine tools could control dimensions to microns, but batch consistency of battery materials was difficult to reach the same degree of certainty. Formulas looked mature, but quality and costs made by different enterprises could still vary greatly.

Batteries were still heavier assets.

According to Chen Binbo's estimate in the interview, investment in a 30GWh battery factory could reach twice that of a 300,000-vehicle complete vehicle factory. After cathode production, it still needed to stand for a period of time. From raw material procurement, production to shipment to Europe, acceptance, and payment, cash turnover could be stretched to half a year.

At the same time, energy density and product size continued to iterate, and production lines from five years ago lost competitiveness quickly.

Factory buildings themselves were also different. Power batteries needed clean workshops and constant temperature and humidity environments, and after production was completed, they still needed to stand and detect for one month to one and a half months.

Equipment, raw materials, and work-in-process continued to occupy funds, and European customer transportation and acceptance extended payment collection. Complete vehicle people were easy to only see batteries occupying 30 to 40 percent of complete vehicle costs, but underestimated the cash and process constraints behind this business.

This experience changed his view on complete vehicle enterprises manufacturing batteries themselves.

In the past at complete vehicle factories, he also felt that power batteries were like engines in the fuel vehicle era and should be mastered in one's own hands; after doing batteries, he thought most complete vehicle enterprises should not build battery capacity themselves.

Without sufficient sales volume, investment could not be thinned, and technological updates could not be kept up.

Intelligent driving also needed a lot of R&D and data accumulation, and enterprises with insufficient scale were difficult to do themselves in all key areas.

BYD was the exception he admitted because the enterprise originally started with batteries and had complete vehicle scale support. For other enterprises, his judgment was more cautious.

He even used SVOLT as an example, worrying that complete vehicle groups building batteries themselves would become a burden when scale was insufficient. This judgment may not apply to all companies, but clearly expressed his change from "complete vehicles must master batteries" to "professional suppliers may be more efficient".

Intelligent driving also had similar scale thresholds.

The experience judgment given by Chen Binbo was that only groups with annual sales volume reaching 5 million vehicles or more could support complete self-research; enterprises with smaller scale building batteries, intelligent driving, and software systems simultaneously, might invest heavily, but effects were still worse than professional companies.

Volkswagen, Audi, and other multinational groups investing and then purchasing Chinese solutions were also seen by him as examples where vertical integration was not always successful.

Scale gaps eventually fell on the cost of every kWh of electricity and the pass rate of every batch of products.

He gave an example that the pass rate of some enterprises could only reach 90% to 92%, while top enterprises could reach 98%. A gap of a few percentage points was enough to decide whether a company made money or loss. Therefore, he judged that power batteries would finally concentrate on a few top enterprises; complete vehicle enterprises because there were more, elimination would be more intense.

He also compared quality costs: under the same conditions, top enterprises might be one to two percentage points lower than peers; if a kWh of electricity was only 2% to 3% more expensive, customers were also willing to pay for stable delivery.

The enterprises that could truly mass-produce power batteries were about a dozen in his view, and finally might converge to about five; the number of complete vehicle enterprises was more, and he estimated that more than 90% needed to be eliminated for supply and demand to possibly recover balance.

Entering a strange industry in the later stage of his career did not make him rush to prove that old experience was still effective. On the contrary, he admitted he underestimated the complexity of batteries. Management experience could help enterprises organize resources, but could not replace relearning processes, pass rates, and cash cycles. For someone who had experienced the peak of joint venture automobiles, this admission was more important than continuing to maintain past authority.

Executive Was His Choice

When the interview was nearing the end, Jia Ke asked Chen Binbo if he regretted not starting a business. His answer was quick: "I never regretted it."

These years, he had contacted entrepreneurs of different sizes, saw the pressure bosses undertook for funds, employees, and enterprise survival.

He respected entrepreneurs and did not treat entrepreneurship as a life proof every manager must complete. Being an executive was the path he chose for himself early on. "If there is space to deploy, deploy; if there is no space to deploy, be a good person."

In his view, society sometimes only saw the glamour of entrepreneurs and did not see their long-term undertaking of debt, employees, and enterprise fate.

Because of understanding this pressure, he never treated not starting a business as a regret. He was willing to undertake operational responsibility in SOEs, central SOEs, joint ventures, and private enterprises, but did not hope to turn all risks into a business that individuals must bear.

This sentence explained his multiple turns.

Shenlong did not reach expectations, he went to do Fengshen; Dongfeng Honda stood on the peak, and he entered parts again; Minth was already global, he still had to learn how to make overseas factories profitable; at Farasis, original manufacturing experience was re-tested by battery chemistry.

Every change could be interpreted by outsiders as position progress, but for him, the more important thing was what problems in the new system were worth solving.

Now, he no longer undertook clear sales indicators, but still maintained contact with the industry through associations, boards of directors, and advisory work.

This was continued participation after taking off burdens. What was pressed on shoulders every day in the past was how many million vehicles were sold this year and how many more next year; now experience could be used for judgment and advice, and space could be left for life.

This state was not started suddenly.

He always liked sports and also always kept interest in the industry. The difference was, when doing CEO in the past, whether SOE, joint venture, or private enterprise, performance had to be made; now as independent director and advisor, there were no daily operational indicators, but could still hear frontline problems from enterprises.

For him, completely leaving society and just waiting for time to pass was the retirement he really was unwilling to accept.

He did not package retirement life as another struggle. 60 was different from 50, and energy would change after 70. When able to do things, maintain contact with society; when truly unable to do, go home to cook, tidy the yard, walk everywhere, "seek peace". Accepting boundaries of body and roles was also part of coexisting with change.

No Standard Answer for Change

"Automotive Business Review" was founded in 2006. That year, high-speed growth of China's automotive industry was already evident, but few could predict export scale, new energy penetration rate, and brand pattern twenty years later.

Chen Binbo did not predict it either. Looking back on these twenty years, what he was most certain of was that no experience could serve as a standard answer for a long time.

Shenlong's high starting point and large-scale construction responded to national industrialization goals; Fengshen's entrusted production responded to lack of funds; Dongfeng Honda pushed 480,000 standard capacity to 720,000, responding to shortage of supply and demand; Minth's overseas division responded to global customers and local rules; power batteries' heavy assets and rapid iteration required enterprises to re-respect scale and specialization. Every practice had a moment of establishment and had boundaries of failure.

This was also his reminder to the current automotive industry. Joint venture system retreat did not mean value lost in capabilities left by joint ventures; Chinese brands walking to the center stage did not mean victory or defeat had ended.

Supply overabundance, price wars, and channel losses were forcing industry restructuring, and enterprises that really remained still had to prove they could make money continuously in the global market.

Before the interview ended, Chen Binbo said "Automotive Business Review" should continue to record the context of industrial changes. Media do not build cars directly, but can observe how different business models rise and how they are corrected by reality.

This sentence could also be used to summarize his forty years. He did not stand outside the tide to summarize the industry, but entered the most specific places of change time and again: factories, capacity, supply chains, pass rates, cash, and people's lives.

He also remembered advice to Jia Ke twenty years ago.

Since it was called "Automotive Business Review", it should not become another collection of public relations soft articles, but should maintain spiritual value and actual value, observe, record, and comment on the industry.

During the twenty years, the magazine expanded to forums, awards, and business schools, and Jia Ke changed from a literati who was "embarrassed to talk about advertising" to an entrepreneur who must manage organizations. Chen Binbo regarded this change as part of media and industry maturing together.

"Go Forward Unceasingly" did not mean always rushing in the same direction. For Chen Binbo, it was more like a way to stay clear-headed: admit old roads are done, see conditions clearly again, and continue to do what can be done in front of eyes.

Career peaks would pass, and industry cycles would turn. Becoming oneself was not getting rid of change, but no longer letting change define oneself.

JackTok Special Dialogue:

Talk 01 Jia Ke Dialogues with Zhou Hang: Can the winner of the last round win the next round?

Talk 02 Jia Ke Dialogues with Fu Qiang: Came, fought, is it enough?

Talk 03 Jia Ke Dialogues with Dong Haiyang: Gross margin is dignity

Talk 04 Jia Ke Dialogues with Wang Chao: China's automotive industry just finished the card dealing phase

Talk 05 Jia Ke Dialogues with Feng Qingfeng: Life needs to be constantly restarted

Talk 06 Jia Ke Dialogues with Dai Lei: Mystery of Byton's Failure and Role Inversion of Chinese and European Automotive Industries

Talk 07 Jia Ke Dialogues with Ying Yilun: What did he bet right?

Talk 08 Jia Ke Dialogues with Wu Gansha: Saw the future, why were there so few arrivals?

Talk 09 Jia Ke Dialogues with Li Hongpeng: Re-understanding persistence, failure, and life's second half

Talk 10 Jia Ke Dialogues with Lin Mi: After exiting car making, where did he break through?

Talk 11 Jia Ke Dialogues with Xu Min: Does China's automotive industry still need a second "Ten Thousand Whys"?

Talk 12 Jia Ke Dialogues with Wang Chaoyun: Entrepreneurship at 54, 9 years of loss, he still expects tomorrow

Talk 20 Jia Ke Dialogues with Liu Ren: Twenty years, the person who constantly set themselves up

The following is "Automotive Business Review" 20th Anniversary JackTok Special Dialogue · Talk 13 Chen Binbo Golden Quotes 50 Items.

①

Forty Years of Chinese Automobiles

1. In 2006, we discussed whether China's automobiles could reach 30 million, 40 million vehicles, but no one thought that twenty years later, new energy vehicles and automobile exports would completely rewrite the industrial pattern.

2. From discussing internal contracting in the planned economy period to today discussing intelligence and globalization, China's automotive industry has walked not through one technical upgrade, but the reconstruction of the entire industrial logic.

3. Many things our generation of automotive people experienced were not adding flowers to a mature system, but building from scratch in places without factories, without supply chains, or even without living support.

4. True changes in the automotive industry occurred not only in products and technology, but also in factories, organizations, supply chains, and the lifestyle of practitioners.

5. After industry cycle changes, experiences proven correct in the past did not necessarily continue to be effective, and could even become the heaviest baggage for enterprises in the next stage.

②

Shenlong's Start and Cost

6. From the strategy of developing the sedan industry at the national development perspective, Shenlong's large-scale construction was correct; but for enterprises, no one could answer for you what to do after planned capacity was built and cars could not be sold.

7. At that time Toyota hoped to do SKD assembly first, GM was only willing to plan a 37,500-vehicle pilot plant, only Citroën accepted 300,000-vehicle scale and provided credit support, so Dongfeng actually did not have too many choices.

8. Shenlong first factory occupied over 2,000 mu of land, wall about 5 kilometers, investment exceeded 10 billion yuan, but at that time China's private automobile market had not truly formed, this was the gap between grand planning and market reality.

9. Chankou was still rice fields and villages at the time, what we built was not just one automotive factory, but had to simultaneously solve employee housing, schools, hospitals, parts support, and basic living problems.

10. Thirty-some years later, the location of Shenlong factory that year became an urban development project, this explained better than any data what vicissitudes the industry and city experienced.

③

How Fengshen Started from Zero

11. Fengshen was truly "having nothing" at the time: no own production base, and not enough funds, could only reorganize R&D, manufacturing, and sales.

12. Dongfeng needed to contribute 78 million yuan in Shenzhen Fengshen, of which 50 million yuan relied on mortgaging Dongfeng Building to obtain loans, the rest part was made up with a stack of acceptance bills.

13. In the case of extremely limited funds, we cooperated with Yulon for R&D, controlled sales ourselves, entrusted production to external factories, and put money in links that truly determined products and markets.

14. If Jing'an Yunbao restructuring failed, Fengshen project would lose the production base, and the whole project might terminate, this was the real pressure we faced at the time.

15. Entrepreneurship did not necessarily mean individuals registered a company; under conditions of lacking funds, assets, and organizations, making a project that could terminate at any time become a reality was also a kind of entrepreneurship.

④

Dongfeng Honda's Capacity Experiment

16. In 2017, Dongfeng Honda's two factories' standard capacity totaled only 480,000 vehicles, but eventually produced and sold 720,000 vehicles, equivalent to releasing nearly one factory's capacity from the existing system again.

17. The multi-skilled workers we cultivated were like "Jokers" in Wuhan mahjong, wherever people were needed, they filled in, allowing the production line to rotate rest, switch posts, and maintain continuous operation.

18. For every position an employee mastered more, the enterprise increased a subsidy; employees increased income, and enterprises also gained more flexible production organization capability.

19. Japanese Honda initially did not believe two factories could complete 720,000 vehicles, executives responsible for manufacturing came to Wuhan twice, focusing on checking whether production load would affect quality.

20. The value of management innovation was not necessarily investing and building another factory, but also in guaranteeing quality and employee rest, truly releasing the capability of existing factories.

⑤

Efficiency Cannot Overdraw People

21. Improving capacity cannot rely only on lengthening working hours, and cannot rely long-term on two-shift systems of 12 hours against 12 hours, because such efficiency would eventually overdraw employees.

22. The future was not a question of whether enterprises were willing to let employees work overtime, but young people would not accept a production method that had work but no life.

23. Manufacturing efficiency that could truly continue must satisfy three conditions simultaneously: comply with regulations, guarantee quality, and let employees be willing to continue working.

24. Factories needed output, equipment needed inspection and maintenance, and employees also needed rest and life; managers could not sacrifice two other conditions for one indicator.

25. If an efficiency could only be maintained by low wages, long working hours, and constantly overdrawing employees, it was not a competitiveness enterprises could rely on long-term.

⑥

Why Joint Venture Enterprises Retreat

26. I expected joint venture enterprises' advantages would weaken, but did not think those enterprises that once reached million, two million units would slide so rapidly in such a short time.

27. Joint venture brands' market share could decline, but the large number of manufacturing, R&D, and marketing talents cultivated by the joint venture system for China's automotive industry had already become an important capability of Chinese brands.

28. Joint venture enterprises' past success came from brands, technology, and scale, but these advantages would not automatically continue; after market environment changed, they also needed to re-prove their value.

29. Volkswagen, Toyota, and other joint venture enterprises would not easily leave China, but the joint venture golden era of occupying the market dominant position in the past would not naturally return.

30. Joint ventures, SOEs, private enterprises, and sole proprietorships ultimately competed on the same table, and the market would not give anyone a more relaxed rule because enterprise identities were different.

⑦

Price Wars and Industry Cleansing

31. That year Changhong hoped to use scale and upstream color tube resources to start price wars, resulting not only in not clearing opponents safely, but also beating itself into bloody mess, and dragging down the entire home appliance industry.

32. The danger of price wars was that enterprises originally wanted to clear others through low prices, but finally often destroyed their own profits, brands, and long-term operational capability first.

33. Winning a price war today did not represent enterprises could stay on the table forever; true winners were those who could still survive and profit after going through several industrial cycles.

34. Dealers were "ducks knowing first when river water warms" in the automobile market; when large numbers of stores began to lose money and exit, it indicated industry cold air had transmitted from the terminal upwards.

35. After dealers were parts suppliers, then complete vehicle enterprises upwards; supply and demand imbalance and price war pressures would finally transmit along the entire industry chain.

⑧

Next Round Industry Elimination

36. China's market needed brand and product diversity, so joint venture enterprises would not disappear completely, but finally only three to five truly competitive joint venture car enterprises may be needed.

37. Power battery enterprises reducing from a dozen to about five families, could recover balance; complete vehicle enterprise numbers were more, and true elimination rate could reach 90 percent.

38. In the past, local governments had capability to support complete vehicle projects long-term; now fiscal and industrial environments were changing, and enterprises could not expect local infinite underwriting anymore.

39. Unified national market, local interests, and enterprise closures, mergers, and transfers still had contradictions; but after local government support capability declined, industry cleansing speed might be faster than in the past.

40. For many automotive enterprises, the most important problem at present was no longer how to expand, but how long cash flow could support, and whether enterprises could continue to live on.

⑨

How Chinese Enterprises Go Overseas

41. The easiest mistake Chinese enterprises went overseas to make was thinking domestic was already successful, just needed to copy Chinese factories, Chinese systems, and Chinese work methods to overseas.

42. One Minth factory in Germany had about 40 million euros sales revenue in one year, but could lose 15 million euros, this indicated having revenue did not equal overseas operation having competitiveness.

43. If an overseas factory used local employees, local equipment, and local systems, enterprises must answer clearly: what made themselves perform better than local competitors?

44. In Mexico, after a major festival ended, maybe seven members of employees did not come to work; managers could not only criticize employees, but must re-design shifts, automation, and delivery systems.

45. When a seed fell on another piece of land, it must adapt to there climate and soil; when Chinese enterprises entered overseas, they also could not require local environments to change completely according to Chinese methods.

⑩

Real Thresholds of Power Batteries

46. After entering the power battery industry, I realized battery production was not traditional mechanical machining, but a chemical system that was harder to control batch consistency.

47. Investment in a 30GWh power battery factory could reach twice that of a 300,000-vehicle complete vehicle factory, but technical update speed was even faster than complete vehicle factories.

48. After cathode production was completed, it still needed to stand for one month to one and a half months, from purchasing raw materials to European customer acceptance payment, enterprise funds could be occupied for half a year.

49. Before doing batteries, I also thought complete vehicle enterprises should master batteries themselves; after truly doing it, I thought complete vehicle enterprises without scale support should not easily build battery capacity themselves.

50. Battery pass rate rising from 90% to 98%, looked like only differing by a few percentage points, ultimately decided may be an enterprise loss, another enterprise continues to make money.