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New-Quality Productive Forces Auto Summit

Nov 04-2025   



 

Summit: Clash of Ideas, Industry Insights

Guo Xuhao, EMBA Class of 2008 alumnus and Vice President of the PKU NSD Automotive Industry Association, emphasized that, according to the latest figures, China's auto sector must shift from quantitative to qualitative growth.

Huang Zhuo, Vice Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, stated that while traditional pillar industries face headwinds, the automotive industry is providing robust support to the Chinese economy and embodies new-quality productive forces.

Liu Erhai, EMBA Class of 2001 and Founding Managing Partner of Joy Capital, traced the sector's evolution: in 2023, China's automotive sector generated an output value of RMB 11 trillion, becoming the nation's largest industry by GDP contribution. Such immense scale encompasses virtually every facet of production and consumption, making its industrial evolution worthy of in-depth examination. The automotive sector's first paradigm shift was electrification, the second was intelligentization, and the third is the overseas expansion and global strategic positioning of Chinese automotive enterprises.

 

Expert Insights

Professor Deng Ziliang, PKU NSD, offered theoretical frameworks for navigating overseas policy risks and competitive landscapes. He noted that in today's complex geopolitical environment, Chinese firms face significant hurdles and must tailor strategies to their industries and objectives.

Yang Yongping, Executive General Manager of EqualOcean and President of EOAuto, argued that "going overseas" is not synonymous with globalization. He believes China's AI-enabled electric vehicles will dominate the future global market and represent a new industrial direction powered by home-grown AI technology.

Liu Yurui, Partner for Automotive Strategy & Business Design at Deloitte China, outlined three pathways for scaling generative-AI in the auto sector: Redefine process paradigms to automate the full R&D–production–supply–sales–service lifecycle. Restructure organizations and personnel to enable decentralized deployment. Build a technology platform with four core modules: infrastructure, agent middleware, data-and-knowledge repository, and application-core capabilities.

 

Round-table Discussion

Shen Xiaojie observed that the strengths of traditional automakers' past successes and strengths have morphed into challenges. Amidst the rise of new energy vehicles and intelligent development, they face talent shortages, declining industry and manufacturer profits, global market pressures, and overcapacity issues. She also proposed development recommendations for the automotive sector: R&D should prioritize breakthroughs in core technologies rather than merely pursuing new model volumes; attention must be paid to profitability across the entire supply chain, as declining profits for vehicle manufacturers impact the survival of upstream suppliers and downstream dealers; Entrepreneurs must uphold social responsibility, maintaining 'doing no harm' as an ethical baseline.

Wu Shaoge stressed that Chinese NEV companies should pursue a "value leap" by adopting multi-modal globalization: shifting from building overseas plants to "reverse joint ventures" that leverage China's technology and supply chain while integrating partners' local manufacturing and sales networks for lightweight expansion. The most effective globalization, she said, is localization—tailoring products to local consumers. Brands must abandon the "high-spec, low-price" label and move from "product export" to "brand export" to raise premium value and build a cultural narrative.

From an academic perspective, Professor Hou Hong defined new-quality productive forces as achieving human–machine complementarity. AI deployment, he argued, must be strategy-driven, integrate stakeholder needs and be service-value-oriented to avoid homogenized competition. Automotive ecosystems should be rebuilt across four dimensions: trans-national, cross-industry, multi-tiered and integrated business lines.

Cheng Hai, General Manager of the Industrial Software Centre at Pera Global, shared application scenarios for R&D-oriented industrial software from a software perspective. He proposed an integration strategy for industrial software enterprises to embrace industrial convergence across three dimensions: "cross-human", "cross-technology", and "cross-technology application and process". This includes fostering industry-academia-research collaborations with universities to cultivate cross-disciplinary talent, promoting the integration of industrial software with AI and digital twins, and establishing seamless data chains across the entire design, R&D, production, and operations lifecycle.

 

 

New-Quality Productive Forces Auto Summit

Nov 04-2025   



 

Summit: Clash of Ideas, Industry Insights

Guo Xuhao, EMBA Class of 2008 alumnus and Vice President of the PKU NSD Automotive Industry Association, emphasized that, according to the latest figures, China's auto sector must shift from quantitative to qualitative growth.

Huang Zhuo, Vice Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, stated that while traditional pillar industries face headwinds, the automotive industry is providing robust support to the Chinese economy and embodies new-quality productive forces.

Liu Erhai, EMBA Class of 2001 and Founding Managing Partner of Joy Capital, traced the sector's evolution: in 2023, China's automotive sector generated an output value of RMB 11 trillion, becoming the nation's largest industry by GDP contribution. Such immense scale encompasses virtually every facet of production and consumption, making its industrial evolution worthy of in-depth examination. The automotive sector's first paradigm shift was electrification, the second was intelligentization, and the third is the overseas expansion and global strategic positioning of Chinese automotive enterprises.

 

Expert Insights

Professor Deng Ziliang, PKU NSD, offered theoretical frameworks for navigating overseas policy risks and competitive landscapes. He noted that in today's complex geopolitical environment, Chinese firms face significant hurdles and must tailor strategies to their industries and objectives.

Yang Yongping, Executive General Manager of EqualOcean and President of EOAuto, argued that "going overseas" is not synonymous with globalization. He believes China's AI-enabled electric vehicles will dominate the future global market and represent a new industrial direction powered by home-grown AI technology.

Liu Yurui, Partner for Automotive Strategy & Business Design at Deloitte China, outlined three pathways for scaling generative-AI in the auto sector: Redefine process paradigms to automate the full R&D–production–supply–sales–service lifecycle. Restructure organizations and personnel to enable decentralized deployment. Build a technology platform with four core modules: infrastructure, agent middleware, data-and-knowledge repository, and application-core capabilities.

 

Round-table Discussion

Shen Xiaojie observed that the strengths of traditional automakers' past successes and strengths have morphed into challenges. Amidst the rise of new energy vehicles and intelligent development, they face talent shortages, declining industry and manufacturer profits, global market pressures, and overcapacity issues. She also proposed development recommendations for the automotive sector: R&D should prioritize breakthroughs in core technologies rather than merely pursuing new model volumes; attention must be paid to profitability across the entire supply chain, as declining profits for vehicle manufacturers impact the survival of upstream suppliers and downstream dealers; Entrepreneurs must uphold social responsibility, maintaining 'doing no harm' as an ethical baseline.

Wu Shaoge stressed that Chinese NEV companies should pursue a "value leap" by adopting multi-modal globalization: shifting from building overseas plants to "reverse joint ventures" that leverage China's technology and supply chain while integrating partners' local manufacturing and sales networks for lightweight expansion. The most effective globalization, she said, is localization—tailoring products to local consumers. Brands must abandon the "high-spec, low-price" label and move from "product export" to "brand export" to raise premium value and build a cultural narrative.

From an academic perspective, Professor Hou Hong defined new-quality productive forces as achieving human–machine complementarity. AI deployment, he argued, must be strategy-driven, integrate stakeholder needs and be service-value-oriented to avoid homogenized competition. Automotive ecosystems should be rebuilt across four dimensions: trans-national, cross-industry, multi-tiered and integrated business lines.

Cheng Hai, General Manager of the Industrial Software Centre at Pera Global, shared application scenarios for R&D-oriented industrial software from a software perspective. He proposed an integration strategy for industrial software enterprises to embrace industrial convergence across three dimensions: "cross-human", "cross-technology", and "cross-technology application and process". This includes fostering industry-academia-research collaborations with universities to cultivate cross-disciplinary talent, promoting the integration of industrial software with AI and digital twins, and establishing seamless data chains across the entire design, R&D, production, and operations lifecycle.