福特希望重拾89年前被错过的机会

choi

Keith Bradsher, 福特在华新目标：重拾89年前被错过的机会. 纽约时报中文网, Oct 21, 2013.
http://cn.nytimes.com/business/20131021/c21ford/

, which is translated from

Keith Bradsher, China's Arms Industry Makes Global Inroads; As it prepares a bid for Hong Kong taxis, the automaker tells of a missed opportunity. New York Times, Oct 21, 2013.

Quote:

Dr Sun Yat-sen "wrote to Henry Ford in 1924, in an exchange of letters released in Hong Kong by Ford Motor on Sunday night [Oct 20]. * * * [the former] invited Mr Ford to create an industrial empire in China even bigger than his operations in the United States, where Ford Motor was still the market leader.

"Ford Motor released copies of Dr. Sun’s correspondence from the archives of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., ahead of the company’s planned bid on Monday for regulatory approval to become a government-approved provider of taxis in Hong Kong. * * * Releasing the documents in Hong Kong, where Taiwanese and mainland Chinese officials sometimes meet secretly at a nearly neutral location, may allow Ford Motor to sidestep sometimes acrimonious arguments from both sides over who are the true modern political heirs to Dr Sun.

"Ford Motor has lagged far behind in China, mainly because GM was ahead of most rivals in winning regulatory permission in 1997 to open a Buick assembly plant in Shanghai. * * * But Ford has begun catching up, with sales in China up 61 percent in September from a year earlier, compared to a gain of 14 percent for GM.

"Ford has a negligible market share in Japan and no assembly plants there. In addition to the highly competitive auto factories that are already there, extensive regulations in Japan set unique standards for even mundane equipment like headlights. These nontariff trade barriers have made it largely uneconomical for international automakers to ship cars to Japan.

My comment: There is no need to read the rest.