Not long ago, General Motors was arguably the top automotive brand in China. In 2010, the American automaker sold more cars in China than in the United States. Since then, China has continually been a key sales market for GM and in 2017 the company’s CEO Mary Barra even said she was fully on-board with China’s EV goals and GM would launch 20 EVs over five years in the country.

But the landscape has changed for GM since the COVID pandemic. While the pandemic affected overall automotive sales in China due to the country’s strict COVID restrictions, GM also has had to contend with the Chinese government’s shift towards encouraging EV adoption and the subsequent rise of domestic EV makers, which has eroded GM’s market position.

Now, GM’s dwindling market share is resulting in the automaker cutting staff in Chinese market-related departments—which includes research and development—according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter. The report added GM will also be meeting with its local partner SAIC to plan a larger structural overhaul of operations in China. Part of the restructuring could involve a shift to producing EVs and a focus on more premium models. GM has 10 joint ventures, two wholly owned foreign enterprises and more than 58,000 employees in China according to its website.

The report of job cuts and a potential restructuring show how far GM has fallen from its peak in 2017. GM and its joint ventures sold 4 million vehicles in China that year, accounting for about a 14% market share in the country. The 4 million vehicles sold in China also represented almost half of GM’s 8.9 million vehicles sold globally.

Security filing

A recent security filing for GM’s second quarter results also said it was working on restructuring operations in China, and showed how China’s EV push is becoming a challenge for the Detroit-headquartered automaker.

The automaker and its China joint ventures delivered about 800,000 vehicles for the first half of this year. Its joint ventures generated an equity loss of $0.2 billion for the first six months of the year, driven by intense competition in a market with significant excess capacity and competitors offering vehicles at lower prices.

The filing listed new energy vehicles, a term use for battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, as a continued negative impact to its operations in China. It said Chinese automakers are prioritizing production over profit in a bid to gain market share and added that Chinese automakers could produce vehicles at costs well below foreign automakers, including that of GM’s China joint venture.

GM first entered the Chinese passenger vehicle market in 1997 and subsequently became one of the more popular foreign brands alongside the likes of Volkswagen. Its success in the Chinese market led it to pulling out of Europe in 2017 to focus on North America and China. (GM is now looking to enter Europe again).

But that shift to focus on just two key markets came shortly before an “abrupt shift to electric vehicles” according to Michael Dunne, a former GM executive. Dunne wrote in his newsletter last week that EV share of total car sales will jump to almost 50% this year, up from just 6% in 2020. Dunne said foreign carmakers, which have seen China as a profit machine, were complacent and had been caught out by the speed of change.

“This year, eighteen of the twenty best-selling EVs are Chinese brands. The other two are Teslas,” Dunne wrote.

Rising nationalism amongst Chinese consumers could also have a part to play. Dunne argued that Chinese brands are “suddenly the new cool” and that global brands like BMW and Buick, which is owned by GM, which were once aspirational are now “so yesterday”.