This was announced during a round table on “Problems of importing and certifying cars on the Russian market”, organized with the participation of the Russian-Chinese Committee for Friendship, Peace and Cooperation, said vice-chairman of the committee Viktor Zvagelsky.
Zvagelsky recalled that at the end of 2022, the Russian-Chinese Committee for Friendship, Peace and Development, together with the Russian-Asian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and the Union of Chinese Entrepreneurs in Russia, had created a new public organization – the Association of Chinese Automobile Manufacturers.
“This story is moderated by us, in the status of public initiative, but it was the state that expressed the initial interest,” he added. — The association works, we collect all problems from Russian and Chinese sellers and production sites. It should be noted that China is generally rarely and reluctant to invest in industrial projects somewhere outside its territory, but Russia may be one of the exceptions. We know that a number of Chinese state-owned companies are expressing a desire to co-invest in production in Russia, in promoting Chinese brands in our market.
But everyone, of course, needs transparent rules of the game, which China today doesn’t fully understand either. This also applies to logistics and customs clearance – everything that is constantly being told that it should be done. Meanwhile, for us today, China is actually a non-alternative automaker, and it would be worth giving it the green light, but it’s not yet.
“One of the main goals of our association is to promote the establishment of assembly plants in Russia,” continued Victor Zvagelsky. – It is necessary to set at the legislative level preferences for car assembly and maintenance companies, to introduce a simplified and preferential system of customs clearance of car kits. We need the support of manufacturers at the regional level. Today, such programs are operating in a number of regions – the Moscow, Kaluga and Kaliningrad regions. But they are designed only for the Russian automotive industry, and we want to expand them to work with China as joint ventures.
We expect that in the near future a large meeting will take place with the leadership of the Ministry of Industry and Trade with the participation of the Customs Service and the Ministry of Economy. It seems to me that if we can bring this process to a common denominator, it will be easier to work with.
“After all, this story is starting from scratch, because China now occupies an absolutely vacant niche,” Zvagelsky summed up. And it’s not temporary, it’s forever. Even if we assume that everything will return to normal, the quality of the Chinese auto industry has increased so much that it is unlikely that Western manufacturers will be able to return to Russia with the same volume of deliveries, even if they want to.
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