"I see no such unique ness with chinese manufactuers against their EU/US/japan competition. i would even argue that japan gives JV with chinese companies to keep China dependent on Japan(engines,chasis etc) and so that china do not develop/invest and become more independent/ self sufficient"
your comment belies a basic ignorance of the chinese auto industry as it develops at the present time. and the conclusion you derive from the whole joint-venture philosophy is insulting, if not laughable. first of all, the chinese companies did not start off begging the japanese for joint-venture arrangements, they were doing very well supplying the local market w/ old japanese & american technology, ok-copied outright-from prototypes brought to china in the era before deng. dongfeng, faw, yuejin, baic ( now foton motor) were producing for chinese market way before the japanese were in the market. now, i'm talking commercial vehicles here, cars were only for big shots. the first successful joint-venture w/a foreign brand was the vw/saic tie-up, w/ch even up to now is producing the santana in the hundreds of thousands-almost all taxis are santanas. when the market opened up, the japanese saw china as the world's biggest untapped market, & together w/ everyone else made a beeline for joint-venture companies. japanese-branded products are not very popular in china, GM & Hyundai outsells even toyota, imagine that. there is & will always be the lingering antipathy towards japan because of ww2 & japan's refusal to apologize for, or even acknowledge their past transgressions , & the chinese have, as their ultimate goal, to out-japanese the japanese. if anything, the japanese had to make the ultimate sacrifice, share their technology w/ a rival whose ultimate goal is to surpass them, all for a chance not to be left out of the biggest single market in the world. the chinese could have done to the japanese what they did to boeing in china. the chinese gov't ordered all chinese regional airlines to shift their orders from boeing to airbus, but they didn't do this to the japanese out of the goodness of their hearts, also i suspect because the chinese are pan-asiatic, & still favor asians to non-asians.
so, it will be the chinese, i think, who will have the last laugh when toyota will no longer be a japanese company because it was the subject of a hostile takeover from shanghai automotive. this could happen. look at rover, now part of nac.