“{…}a video commemorating the establishment of 12 competitors, ranging from state-affiliated FAW Group in 1956 to more recent commercial EV startups like Xpeng, Nio, and Li Auto over the past decade. The video showcases historical clips, expansive landscapes, and vehicles being prepared for export. “Our stories are different from each other but share the same direction,” the narrator says. “There’s no distinction between ‘you’ and ‘me’.”

This is the spirit of China.
Chinese businesses generally prefer collaboration over competition (or at least this is what they tend to think). It is positive as well as negative.

You can perceive it as”it is always China vs the world”, where the ethnicity, country, language and culture, all define the Han race and the minorities do nothing other than dancing in cultural festivals. All Chinese are one and the rest of the world is “foreigner” – an explanation of the thousands of years of inward-looking, closing up and xeniphobia that characterises most of the East Asian nations – an extreme example of which is North Korea.

Or you can perceive it is as something truly noble as businesses banding together to uplift the standard of the society. Very noble in theory but in practice it is usually the government whose policy-making forces the businesses together to compete internationally for “the country”. As Chinese firms become more modern, they are are very susceptible to IP theft and whose the culprit? Other Chinese businesses no wonder. In this regard it is always suitable to have the government’s back while making profits meanwhile letting your tech open and free for all to us otherwise they’re gonna steal it anyway.

To take any statement in context, first you have to assess the social status (=the position and power in the Communist Party) of the person who said it. This kind of articles would have a deeper analysis if they told the whole story of the social status of BYD’s CEO and the “high ranking official” from GWM.

Yes, the Chinese companies are making a dent. Yes, the Ukraine war helped china secure a big market like Russia. Yes, they are being looked upon favorably in markets like the middle east and and others like the UK, Australia etc.
Till, now this was happening naturally and kind of under the radar. But by making such claims, they have put the Chinese auto industry on the spot. Like the article states, the backlash might be that the old “legends” might rally together and fight against them to stop the spread of the Chinese brands. They might even play dirty and actually get the Chinese companies caught up in legislative/regulatory problems.

The Chinese are doing great, but they should be more careful and not give reason for their competition to step-up their fight against them.