You've GOT to be kidding me! GM in China?

[AZRedhawk44]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE57T0IV20090830

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - General Motors said on Sunday it has agreed to set up a light commercial vehicle production venture with major Chinese automaker FAW Group, with total investment of 2 billion yuan ($293 million).

The 50-50 joint venture, based in the northeast China city of Changchun in Jilin province, will make light-duty trucks and vans, GM said in a statement.

"For us in China, this is an important complement to the rest of our portfolio," Kevin Wale, president and managing director for GM's China operations, told reporters in a conference call.

"We are well established in passenger vehicles and mini commercial vehicles and we haven't had a presence in the truck segment. Adding a truck portfolio rounds that out."

The venture will use two existing FAW plants in Changchun and the city of Harbin, also in the northeast, with combined annual capacity of roughly 90,000 vehicles, Wale said.

A greenfield plant, currently under construction in Harbin, will add 100,000 units of capacity by the end of next year, he said.

Vehicles made at the venture will carry the FAW brand and will focus on supplying the China market, but they could be exported under a GM brand through the Detroit automaker's global network in the future, Wale said.

GM is making Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac models at its flagship China venture with SAIC Motor Corp. It also makes minivans, pickup trucks and the Spark compact car in a three-way tie-up with SAIC and Liuzhou Wuling Automobile.

SAIC-GM-Wuling sold 87,925 vehicles in July, up 90.7 percent from a year earlier, helped by Beijing's stimulus initiatives to support the industry, including subsidies for buyers in rural areas.

GM, which now holds 34 percent of SAIC-GM-Wuling, has been seeking to raise its stake in the venture.

Domestic media reported earlier this month that GM had secured an initial deal to take over Liuzhou Wuling Auto's 15.9 percent stake for roughly 300 million yuan ($43.9 million).

Wale reiterated the U.S. automaker's interest in raising its stake in the venture but made no further comment on the issue.

Ever more reason to boycott Government Motors.

"The american auto industry is too important to let die?  Hires too many American workers?"

What horse-pucky!

GM now has money to invest overseas because it got it from John Q Taxpayer. 

[longeyes]

And one of these days we will have a branch Capitol in Beijing too...

[El Tejon]

GM has been in the PRC for some time.

Considering that it is a growth market, why shouldn't it be???

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Meh.  It just means that GM wants to sell some trucks to the Chinese.  Seems perfectly sensible to me.

By the way, $293mil is peanuts for GM.  They spend more than that on single ad campaign.

[Gewehr98]

IIRC, Jeep has had operations going in the PRC for quite some time, too.

[FTA84]

'

[seeker_two]

GM has been in the PRC for some time.

Very true....go to www.insideautomotive.com and search Ed Wallace's columns...they've almost made more money from Chinese sales than European sales...

[longeyes]

Doing business in China is great.  If GM had been smarter maybe they'd have owned the Chinese market the way Toyota and Honda own ours?  And wouldn't it be nice if GM were making money for GM stockowners and bondholders?

[Monkeyleg]

And wouldn't it be nice if GM were making money for GM stockowners and bondholders?

Yup. Maybe Obama would give them 12 cents on the dollars they invested instead of 10.

[Standing Wolf]

General Motors also imports finished engines for some of its "American" vehicles.

[Firethorn]

Considering that it is a growth market, why shouldn't it be???

Pretty much my thought.  It's not like the Chinese don't have enough people to support the factories even if they produce entirely for the domestic market.

[Balog]

Chinese people make cars for the Chinese market, and send a % back to the US. This is a bad thing how?

Now, if they were shifting all production (including that for the US market) to China, then there'd be a reason to get pissed.

[lupinus]

GM has been in the Chinese market for some time, and IIRC actually performs quite strongly there.  Ford is over there as well and both were featured in a special I saw about a year ago.