BAIC’s 4 Million Unit Ambition: The End of the China JV Era?

The China Auto Market is Pivoting—And So Are Its SOE Giants

As an Auto Market Insight Analyst based in China, I track the tectonic shifts that rewrite the global automotive supply chain. For years, the foundational revenue engine for Western OEMs in China has been the Joint Venture (JV) model. BAIC Group, a prominent state-owned enterprise (SOE) and partner to giants like Mercedes-Benz (Beijing Benz) and Hyundai (Beijing Hyundai), has just unveiled its ‘Double Leap’ strategy with a headline-grabbing goal: **4 million unit sales by 2030.**

This isn’t just an ambitious sales target; it’s a direct declaration that the golden age of the JV model is officially over. The fact is, Chinese-brand passenger vehicles already captured 56% of the domestic market in 2023, accelerating the trend by gaining 6.1 percentage points year-over-year. When an SOE of BAIC’s stature aggressively shifts its internal resources toward its ‘autonomous brands,’ the Western partner’s slice of the pie is inevitably going to shrink.

The Data: BAIC’s Aggressive ‘Double Leap’ Timeline

The new BAIC strategic plan—designed for China’s ‘Fifteenth Five-Year Plan’ period—is a two-phase, results-driven assault on the top tier of the world’s largest auto market, which exceeded 30 million total units in 2023. The objectives are clear and sequential:

• **Phase 1: The Scale Leap (2025–2027):** The group aims to surpass **3 million units** in total annual sales, securing a position among China’s top six automotive groups. This phase is about volume and regaining mainstream relevance for its domestic brands.
• **Phase 2: The Efficiency Leap (2028–2030):** The target climbs sharply to over **4 million units** in annual sales, demanding a domestic market share exceeding 10%, with the stated goal of entering the ‘First Tier’ of Chinese automakers.

These goals are predicated on the current momentum. The Group reported 1.07 million cumulative sales in the first eight months of 2025, with its autonomous brands recording a year-on-year growth of 24.5% during the same period.

The Pivot: Why 4M Spells Crisis for Western JVs

For decades, BAIC’s JVs, such as Beijing Benz and Beijing Hyundai, provided the core revenue and technological foundation. Now, the internal narrative has decisively flipped to ‘revitalizing autonomous brands.’ This is the critical, zero-sum game context that Western auto executives must internalize.

The push for 4 million sales requires a massive, coordinated allocation of capital, talent, and production capacity. Where will that capacity come from? The struggles of Beijing Hyundai offer a stark preview. Despite a recent capital injection commitment, the JV has already been forced to close two of its four manufacturing plants amid declining sales in the hyper-competitive Chinese market. While the luxury sector (Beijing Benz) remains robust, the strategic priority for BAIC’s highly-prized R&D and digital talent is now clearly directed towards its domestic ARCFOX and BEIJING brands, not the German or Korean co-partners.

The Execution Roadmap: BAIC’s “Liquid” Strategy and AI

To power this ‘Double Leap,’ BAIC is not relying on old SOE structures. The strategy is built on a comprehensive **’1958′ framework** designed to maximize efficiency and digital advantage:

• **’One Main, Five Modernizations’:** This core principle emphasizes the development of autonomous brands while accelerating the group’s Marketization, Internationalization, Digitalization, and Low-carbonization (NEV focus).
• **Organizational & Talent Reform:** The Group plans to move toward a **’Liquid’ organizational model** to break down legacy departmental silos, enabling quicker resource allocation. This is further fueled by the ‘Catfish Effect’—an explicit strategy to bring in highly competitive external talent to disrupt and revitalize the existing team.
• **Digital Transformation:** Crucially, BAIC is embedding **Artificial Intelligence (AI)** deep into its R&D and management processes. This mirrors the industry-wide shift in China where software and connectivity define a vehicle’s competitiveness, not just hardware.

The shift is complete: from being a strategic partner reliant on foreign technology to a challenger leveraging state resources and hyper-local digital innovation (including partnerships with tech giants like Huawei and CATL) to dominate the market it once shared.

Recommended Reading: The Shift in Chinese Business Strategy

For Western executives looking to understand the core strategic imperative driving Chinese SOEs like BAIC, I recommend:

• Selling to China: Stories of Success, Failure & Constant Change – *The market is moving faster than ever. This provides an essential guide to the new realities of the China auto market, where the rules of engagement are being redrawn by domestic titans.*

Analyst Outlook: The Clock is Ticking

BAIC’s ‘Double Leap’ plan is a formal, state-backed mandate to scale and dominate. The goal of 4 million units is a clear target for domestic victory. For every European and American OEM with a Chinese JV, the message is simple: you are no longer the strategic priority. Your local partner is now your fiercest competitor. The time for passive profit-taking from JVs is over; the era of strategic competition with your former allies has begun. The Chinese auto market’s local brand dominance, which reached 56% in 2023, underscores this new reality.