La Jornada: Chinese car sales rebounded in June

China’s automobile exports surpassed one million units in June, marking the highest figure for a single month. This boost was achieved thanks to the participation of electric vehicle brands such as BYD and Jaecoo, whose main destination was the European markets, as highlighted by Enodo Economics.

This advance by Chinese brands, which also have plans to install supercharging stations, has as a counterpart the job cuts planned by the largest European producer, Volkswagen, of up to 100 thousand jobs, reported the consulting firm specialized in the Asian power.

This export performance coincides with China registering real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 4.3% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, one of its lowest rates in decades, not counting the Covid-19 period, due to the weakness of domestic consumption and the fall in investment.

Driven by the automotive sector and artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese exports grew 27% in June, reaching a record of 412.4 billion dollars, the highest growth since October 2021, while imports rose 36%, to 286.8 billion dollars, the largest increase since June 2021. The monthly trade surplus soared to 125.6 billion dollars, and puts the country on track to exceed a trillion dollars in surplus by the end of 2026.

The rebound in energy and AI prices managed to end a three-year deflationary streak. Nominal GDP grew 5.9 percent.

Trade war

Chinese expansion does not only remain in the field of automobiles. The country is advancing by leaps and bounds in technological autonomy. In the context of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), President Xi Jinping presented an ambitious global governance strategy, while firms such as Huawei launch large-scale computing systems (Atlas 950 SuperPoD) to operate independently of the US Nvidia chips.

For its part, the European Union (EU) is preparing an emergency working group amid fears that Beijing will apply restrictions in October on the export of rare earths, such as yttrium, a critical mineral for AI semiconductors.