In the first half of 2026, China’s auto exports delivered a jaw-dropping number: 5.096 million vehicles. For the first time in history, half-year exports crossed the 5-million mark. June alone saw 1.037 million cars leave the country — a 75% jump year-on-year. That single-month figure already exceeds Japan’s projected full-year exports.
The news was met with cheers across the Chinese internet. Then a new meme appeared and poured cold water on the celebration: “Li Shufu blasts the 5-million export figure.” Online summaries boiled his supposed comments down to three sharp accusations: either manufacturers are colluding with domestic used-car dealers to push excess inventory overseas through foreign ports; or they’re gaming the 13% export tax rebate with fake shipments; or they’re shipping batteries disguised as complete cars, then stripping them out for overseas energy projects.
Three cuts, each aimed at the heart of the record. Let’s walk through what actually sits behind those 5 million cars.
1. First, did Li Shufu even say it?
The circulating version claims Li made these remarks during a keynote at a Chongqing forum in June. Public records show he talked mainly about Geely’s restructuring and succession planning — not these three points. Whether he said something similar in a closed-door session without cameras is impossible to verify. It’s equally possible that media mixed earlier comments from Li with last year’s “auto-industry Evergrande” warning from Great Wall’s Wei Jianjun.
So the attribution remains uncertain. What is certain is the number itself: 5.096 million cars really did leave China. And the official role those cars played is spelled out clearly in a mid-year review by the China Automobile Dealers Association — “exports supporting domestic demand.”
In plain language: the home market could no longer carry the weight, so exports had to hold it up from below.
2. Why couldn’t the domestic market hold?
In 2024 and 2025 China ran large-scale trade-in subsidy programs. Real money was spent to pull forward car-replacement demand that many families would otherwise have delayed.
But cars are durable goods. A household doesn’t replace its vehicle every year, and the pool of households that can afford to is finite. Once that demand was pulled forward and exhausted, the domestic market cooled sharply. New-energy vehicle sales fell 20–30% year-on-year. As the clear industry leader, BYD felt the drop first and hardest — when you sell 200,000–400,000 cars a month, even a modest percentage decline hits the absolute numbers hard.
So the cars had to go somewhere else.
Of the 5.09 million exported in the first half, roughly 54% were still gasoline vehicles, many of them from joint-venture or foreign brands. SAIC’s MG badge is the clearest example — large volumes of China-built MGs are shipped back to Europe. That is also why the EU slapped SAIC with the highest countervailing duty. The remaining 46% were new-energy vehicles, but fluctuating oil prices, clogged ports, and incomplete local after-sales networks all make it hard to claim pure overseas demand is the full story.
The real pressure remains at home: trade-in subsidies burned through replacement demand while the production lines kept running.
3. What the three cuts actually hit
- Cut one: zero-kilometer used cars and the tax rebate
A “zero-kilometer used car” is a brand-new vehicle that a manufacturer pushes onto dealers, 4S shops, or affiliated financiers purely to inflate sales figures. The car is registered, then sits in a lot without ever being driven. Some even collect national, provincial, and local subsidies along the way.
These cars do get exported, but usually not to tightly regulated markets like Europe. They tend to head for Southeast Asia, the Middle East, South America, or Russia. That helps explain why some overseas buyers complain that Chinese cars lack proper after-sales support — a portion may have come through channels with no real overseas service network.
Until recently these zero-kilometer cars could still claim the 13% export VAT rebate. Authorities have now tightened the rules: a vehicle must be registered for 180 days before a normal export application, or the original manufacturer must issue a formal after-sales confirmation. The goal is not only to close a loophole but to clear space for legitimate manufacturers to sell new cars through proper channels.
Rebate fraud has also occurred. A common tactic is to declare a car actually worth 150,000 yuan at 250,000 or even 350,000 yuan, because the rebate is calculated on the declared value. The current priority, however, is simply to slow the zero-kilometer pipeline so regular exports can move first.
- Cut two: payment terms under pressure
Suppliers who delivered parts to BYD used to receive an internal instrument called “Di-Chain” rather than cash. Payment could be delayed two, three, or even four months. Anyone who needed money sooner had to discount the instrument, losing part of its face value as financing cost.
After the government required large firms to settle with suppliers within 60 days, BYD switched to commercial acceptance bills. “Acceptance” does not mean immediate cash; the bills still carry their own maturity periods. By the end of 2025 BYD’s commercial acceptance bills had surged 727%. Many people assume a bill is backed by a bank. In reality a commercial acceptance bill is ultimately backed only by the issuing company’s own credit. The payment delay never disappeared — it just changed its name.
As the biggest seller, every industry-wide pressure is magnified on BYD.
- Cut three: the economic logic of shipping batteries inside car shells
China tracks a figure called the “installation rate” — the share of power batteries that actually end up in vehicles. In 2021 it was still 70%. By 2025 it had fallen to 44%. In May 2026 it stood at just 38%. More than 60% of the batteries produced never go into cars.
At the same time the export tax rebate on complete vehicles remains 13%, while the rebate on batteries has already dropped to 6% and will fall to zero on 1 January next year. On a car priced around 150,000 yuan the battery can account for two-thirds of the cost. The arithmetic creates an obvious incentive: install the battery in a car shell, claim the higher vehicle rebate, ship it overseas, then remove the battery for other uses.
No solid public evidence has yet confirmed that any company is doing this at scale. The economic motive, however, is clear. BYD already operates plants in Hungary, Brazil, and Thailand and therefore has the physical capability. The point is only that the logic exists, not that it has been proven.
4. The world is becoming a reservoir for Chinese overcapacity
On the surface BYD looks formidable. Three days before this writing it took delivery of its seventh car carrier, the Zhengzhou. These ships are named after cities where BYD has factories and sail the world with giant red BYD logos. The Hungarian plant is already running; Brazil and Thailand are expanding. This is the glossy face of a globalizing champion.
Underneath sit weak domestic replacement demand, the cleanup of zero-kilometer cars, tighter payment rules, and a 727% jump in commercial acceptance bills. Every industry ailment is amplified on the market leader.
What the government is doing now is putting those problems on the table one by one. BYD looks less like a company about to collapse and more like a strong patient wheeled into the operating room. The surgery will hurt and there will be blood, but the underlying constitution is robust enough that recovery remains likely.
The simplest conclusion is this: domestic demand has stalled while production lines keep turning out cars and batteries. The surplus has to go somewhere, so the rest of the world is being asked to serve as China’s reservoir. Cars are pushed outward; batteries travel inside car shells. Policy is simultaneously closing the gray channels and clearing space for the legitimate manufacturers. All of it amounts to drilling extra floodgates in an overflowing capacity pool.
Whether those gates will eventually drain the pool, only time will tell.
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