When Zhu Chun Quio first started out as a taxi driver in Wuhan more than 30 years ago, he remembers that there were 32,570 cars on the road, all Toyota Crowns. These days almost 2m cars clutter up the sprawling city’s thoroughfares. “At 9am we’re already bumper-to-bumper,” says Zhu, at the wheel of his C-Elysee, one of the models manufactured locally by Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen.
Wuhan, population 10 million, is a transport hub, and dreams of becoming the car city of the People’s Republic. The automobile industry represents 20% of the city’s economy, with 200,000 direct jobs and more than a million indirectly.
And Wuhan’s car industry is growing fast. General Motors and its Chinese partner, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, have launched a new plant capable of producing 240,000 vehicles annually. At the end of this year Renault will be rolling out an assembly unit. With the plants operated by the Dongfeng-PSA Peugeot Citroën joint venture and Honda, among others, the provincial capital will soon have about 10 car factories, producing more than 2m vehicles a year, in an area smaller than the Paris basin. In 2014 Wuhan was the world’s seventh-largest centre of automobile production, with 1.13m vehicles assembled, although Chongqing, which assembled 2.3m vehicles last year, tops the global rankings.
The most visible impact of this development is the congestion. Corinne Policisto, who works for Renault, first came to what seemed a pretty drab place in 1988. Returning in 2013, she was bewildered. “When I visited my old stamping ground near the university, it had all changed. In those days I could cycle around at 2am but I wouldn’t dare now, the traffic’s so crazy.”
Like much of the rest of China, Wuhan is seemingly one huge building site. In one direction a new development with 10 towers is going up, in the other an elevated urban highway. Not far off there is a new overground railway and beyond a vast mall. Not to mention thousands of homes. There are currently 11,000 building sites in the city. “It’s been chaos since they started building the subway five years ago,” Zhu says. In December 2014 a fourth new line opened and the city council has promised that by 2020 there will be 12. “There wasn’t much change in the 2000s,” says Liu Yi, a young PSA executive. “But in 2010 it all speeded up, with Beijing driving development.”
Wuhan cannot compete with the big cities on the coast, despite its efforts, but it has a prominent place in Chinese history. In the early 20th century the revolt that overthrew the Qing dynasty started here. During the war against Japan the town became a rear base for the authorities, and Mao Zedong liked to swim in the Blue river.
His successors launched the great offensive to give the country its own car industry. “The objective was to develop six large firms,” says Yin Xinmin, professor of economics at Fudan University, Shanghai. “To develop the automobile, it was necessary to create everything that gravitated around it. Hubei, with its capital Wuhan, was an ideal candidate, being one of the earliest industrial centres in China. The region is well-connected, thanks in particular to the Yangtze river.”
Second Automotive Works, which changed its name to Dongfeng in 1992, set up shop in Shiyan, in the mountains of Hubei, 450km from Wuhan. In 1990 the company started a joint venture with Citroën, opting to build its first civilian car plant at Wuhan, which was more accessible than Shiyan. Only in 2005 did Dongfeng move its headquarters to the city, by which time it was working with PSA, Honda, Nissan and Renault, giving ideas to the increasingly ambitious local authorities.
“Every city needs a champion. Wuhan stands out because Dongfeng is involved in more joint ventures with foreign firms than the other state-owned organisations,” says Jean-François Dufour, at the consultants DCA. “It’s an important company in China and it carries quite a lot of weight. For the local authorities, local manufacturers are crucial. It’s a matter of prestige, a source of potential revenue and above all jobs.”
To the west of the city, the economic and technological development zone hinges on “Dongfeng city”. The firm has given its name to all the streets round the head office: Dongfeng Road 1, 2, 3 and so on. There are six car factories in the vicinity, operated by PSA, Honda and, of course, Dongfeng.
“Dongfeng is looking out for us,” says Zhu. What with the workers on the assembly lines, in the hospitals, sports centres and housing complexes, everything in this part of Wuhan is Dongfeng. “They’re good employers, too,” Liu says. “The health cover and pensions are better than other companies.”
“It’s a good thing to have this firm here,” Zhu says. “There’s plenty of work and that brings in trade. Without them the city would never have developed so quickly. And you know, Xu Ping, the Dongfeng boss, is more important than the head of the city council.”
The provincial capital is also one of China’s largest university towns, with 1.3 million students. So there is a steady stream of eager young technicians and engineers. Labour costs are lower than on the coast too.
“For a long time the economy was a bit sluggish,” says the local head of a French equipment manufacturer. “But now it’s catching up lost time.”
This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde
