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The Chinese government is signalling enough is enough when it comes to the fierce competition in the country's electric car market. China's industrial policy has engineered a remarkable transformation to electric vehicles in what is the world's largest auto market. In so doing, it has spawned far more makers than can possibly survive. Now, long-simmering concerns about oversupply and debilitating price wars are coming to the fore, even as the headline sales numbers soar to new heights. Market-leader BYD announced this week that its sales grew 31 per cent in the first six months of the year to 2.1 million cars. Nearly half of those were pure electric vehicles and the rest were plug-in hybrids, it said in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing. The company phased out internal combustion engine cars in 2022. BYD came under thinly veiled criticism in late May when it launched a new round of price cuts, and several competitors followed suit. The chairman of Great Wall Motors warned the indus
Troubled property developer China Evergrande Group says Beijing's stock watchdog has fined it 4.2 billion yuan ($333.4 million) for allegedly falsifying its revenue, among other violations, as it conducts a deep clean of the troubled financial sector. The company said in a release to mainland Chinese stock exchanges late Monday that its chairman, Hui Ka Yan, was fined 47 million yuan ($6.5 million) and banned from China's markets for life. Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin, was detained by authorities in September for suspected illegal crimes. The notice cited a preliminary ruling by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which recently got a new chief, Wu Qing, an industry veteran with a reputation for being tough on market misbehavior. Evergrande is the world's most indebted property developer, with more than $300 billion in debts. It is among dozens of Chinese companies that have collapsed since 2020 under official pressure to rein in excessive borrowing that the ruling Communist