I know I’m going to be called a shill for this, but anyway:
Earlier today some dude posted a review by wheelsboy for the Avatr 12 sedan. It was immediately downvoted to shit. And it wasn’t a bad review! It was in depth, it was fun, the guy did an overview of the product and showed us how it drove. It wasn’t some low quality thing!
If this was just a random thing, then whatever; odd stuff sometimes from time to time. But this is a reoccuring issue when it comes to Chinese (and even some Euro!) brands and models, or news, or manufacturers
Look, I get it; you don’t like China. I’m not super keen on every aspect of their society myself. But jesus; if you don’t like something, just look away. Stop trying to drown out EV news from the largest EV market in the whole damn world. If you want that, make your own subreddit that’s just about american EVs and remain blissfully unaware of what Stellantis or Geely or whoever the hell is doing. But don’t ruin it for the rest of us!
My complaint is not with the people of China, their culture, or the products that they export. My complaint is the extreme lengths that the Chinese government goes to give artificial advantages to their domestic producers (e.g., heavy direct subsides, protectionist import policies, intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, dumping, labor exploitation, environmental damage, etc.) to the point that they drive all competition out of the market.
I do not want to reward cheaters for cheating.
China actually has some pretty tight IP laws. Get a patent over there and you can put ‘thieves’ out of business. Law there is based on intent, which makes things way simpler in court. The issue is that so many Western companies just don’t bother, them act surprised when a Chinese company copied their shit. All they can do after that is play whack-a-mole with importers into covered counties. A patent is just is a license to sue.
A lot of what people hear about China is just plain propaganda. Don’t worry, they do that too.