![\"Chung](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/news-p.v1.20260809.11b242fb3870492180e3ab44494c9859_P2.jpg\"\/ "\\"China's")
Chung Dae-jin, Chairman of the Korea Automobile & Mobility Industry Association<\/p>\nChung Dae-jin, Chairman of the Korea Automobile & Mobility Industry Association<\/p>\n
On a business trip to China more than 30 years ago, the streets of Beijing were filled with nothing but Volkswagens. Back then, China sought to learn advanced technology and production methods through large-scale joint ventures with Volkswagen, and to build up its own auto industry. The China that once learned how to make cars this way is now the world’s largest car exporter, while Volkswagen, the company that taught China, has been reduced to worrying about its survival.<\/p>\n
Volkswagen Group is currently reviewing a restructuring plan that would close four of its plants in Germany and cut up to 100,000 jobs. It is the result of high labor and fixed costs, rigid labor-management relations and slow decision-making, all of which have dragged down the pace of change. On top of this, as Chinese electric vehicles rapidly penetrate the European market, Volkswagen’s position is being shaken in China and Europe at the same time.<\/p>\n
The offensive from Chinese automakers is, quite literally, a “car-wave tactic.” In the first half of this year, some 630 new car models poured out of China. At an average of 3.5 models a day, China surpassed in just six months what the United States is expected to release in new models over the next four years. China’s countless automakers compete on price, performance and speed to market with their survival on the line. Through that fierce process, costs fall, technology advances, and the surviving companies grow even stronger and flood into world markets. China’s car-wave tactic also differs from the human-wave tactics of the past. It is not simply a matter of having many companies and vehicles. It is a qualitative offensive that has secured product competitiveness by combining vast driving data with artificial intelligence (AI), software and battery technology. It is all the more threatening because it is a structure in which quantitative superiority converts into qualitative superiority.<\/p>\n
Countries have responded in different ways. The United States has effectively blocked market entry by imposing a steep 127.5% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles. Japan is encouraging domestic production by granting EVs a domestic-production incentive tax benefit of 400,000 yen per vehicle. Europe, by contrast, is belatedly pursuing an Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) this year, but considerable time is still needed before it is actually legislated and takes effect. While Europe waited for its framework to be completed, the influx of Chinese cars surged and its auto industry has been shaken helplessly. Volkswagen shows just how harsh a price a late response can exact.<\/p>\n
So what should we learn? The first lesson is labor-management competitiveness. At a time of China’s speed war and the great transition to future mobility, wasteful conflict helps neither labor nor management. Beyond the rigid operation of the so-called yellow envelope law and the 52-hour workweek, and beyond disputes over how to distribute performance-based pay, we need the wisdom of coexistence that raises productivity and flexibility. Considering the painful job cuts Volkswagen will carry out, true job security can be sustained only when a competitive production base exists.<\/p>\n
The second lesson is a domestic-production incentive tax. According to figures on new car registrations in South Korea for the first half of 2026 released by the Korea Automobile & Mobility Association, Chinese-made vehicles accounted for 41.2% of all imported cars, rising to first place by country of manufacture. The offensive from Chinese cars has already landed deep inside our home turf. This is a moment when safeguards are urgently needed for companies that produce at home and protect jobs and supply chains. It is regrettable that EVs were excluded from the scope of the domestic-production incentive tax in the government’s recently announced tax law revision. As the revision is fleshed out later, we hope that EVs will be included without fail, reflecting the urgent reality facing the domestic auto industry.<\/p>\n
China learned how to make cars from Volkswagen. Now Volkswagen and the entire European auto industry are being shaken by the Chinese offensive. The United States and Japan moved early to build defensive walls, while Europe is paying the price for a response that came a step too late. We must never let the warning Volkswagen is sending us go unheeded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chung Dae-jin, Chairman of the Korea Automobile & Mobility Industry Association On a business trip to China more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20947],"tags":[51611,7337,51608,51609,51607,51610,5356,32528],"class_list":["post-69311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-volkswagen","tag-car-wave-tactic","tag-chinese-electric-vehicles","tag-domestic-production-incentive-tax","tag-ev-tariffs","tag-korea-auto-industry","tag-korea-automobile-mobility-association","tag-volkswagen","tag-volkswagen-restructuring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}