Every economic system has an ugly reality and communist countries like China are no exception. An electric car scandal that recently surfaced was unexpected, however, especially with the seemingly unbiased green car revolution.
China has a reputation for being a leader in solar and wind power, outpacing similar efforts in other countries. While China’s push to counter its horrid city conditions is respected, the hidden truths to its electric vehicle makers ‘participating’ in these efforts is ghastly.
20 electric vehicle companies, including Nissan, Hyundai, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile (JAC), and BYD, corrupted their mission to build electric cars in turn for government subsidies. While these electric car companies were receiving money from the Chinese government, the electric vehicles that were ‘built’ were actually nothing more than air.
The purpose of the government subsidies was to aid companies in building electric cars and making it more likely that consumers will spend. Perhaps the Chinese government was more focused on wanting to sell over 700,000 electric and plug-in hybrid cars in 2016, but only selling 245,000 vehicles within the first eight months.
Xu Yanhua, one of the vice secretaries for the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers commented, “This is a major blow to the industry and also has a large impact on the country’s policy enforcement.”
Although only five of the electric vehicle companies have been sanctioned so far, we can expect further action. Is this type of corruption likely to happen across the world within similar countries that implement government initiatives?
That remains to be seen. Perhaps there needs to be a better system in place for keeping track of the vehicles that are supposed to be made, or perhaps the solution is for government workers to avoid spreading themselves too thin. Not everything can be tracked with exact certainty.