This report on FT.com explains how European businesses - not only car makers, but they are probably the worst affected - are unhappy about the treatment they are receiving at the hands of China's antitrust authorities. They (the manufacturers) argue that there is more to high car and spare parts prices than monopolistic behaviour. All that practice that they got in the eighties and nineties in the UK, explaining car prices, must be coming in useful. Whether the Chinese authorities will believe them any more than the UK press and public remains to be seen.
Postscript: Automotove News reports that Audi will accept their punishment. Bowing to the inevitable, I suppose. The same source also tells us that GM have been brought into the investigation too, including this paragraph which is of much wider interest:
Postscript: Automotove News reports that Audi will accept their punishment. Bowing to the inevitable, I suppose. The same source also tells us that GM have been brought into the investigation too, including this paragraph which is of much wider interest:
For Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac vehicles, the average sum of replacing all the parts relative to the price of a new vehicle is close to 300 percent, the average level in the U.S. and European markets, GM said.
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