It’s customary for state officials of a car-producing nation to prefer local manufacturers for their transportation needs.
For example, German dignitaries will mostly be seen on TV stepping out of a Mercedes, BMW or Audi; their British counterparts choose brands like Jaguar, the French, large Peugeots or Renaults and so on.
It’s also natural to promote their domestic products, though we haven’t heard of any law specifically prohibiting the purchase of certain brands for all government agencies. Until now, that is.
The Chinese government has excluded all foreign brands from its list of new cars that can be acquired for official purposes. The reasons cited are that local agencies must reduce their spending costs, cut their energy consumption and minimize pollution. Surely, it’s not yet another case of the government interfering with free trade…
The list published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology contains 412 models, all of them made by Chinese automakers.
It also mandates that vehicles used for official purposes like tax collection and criminal investigations must cost up to 180,000 yuan (US$28,571); have an engine no bigger than 1.8-liters in capacity and their manufactures must have spent at least 3 percent of their core revenue in research and development in the last two years.
What it does not clarify, though, is whether the rule that mandates the purchase of domestic-only vehicles apply for all new car purchases, including those made for the upper echelons of the Chinese government…
Story References: Bloomberg News
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