China's decades-long auto geography is undergoing one of its most consequential rearrangements in years. By 2025 the race for the unofficial title of “China’s auto capital” has moved beyond raw output to become a contest of industrial models: inland clusters betting on locally nurtured champions, coastal cities favouring high-value services and components, and provincial capitals using targeted investment to attract whole supply chains.
Chongqing has emerged at the front of the pack. Local authorities report annual production of roughly 2.788 million vehicles in 2025, up 9.7%, with new-energy vehicle (NEV) output hitting about 1.296 million units, a 36% rise. The city’s push has hinged on a single success story: Seres (赛力斯) and its tightly integrated partnership with Huawei that produced the high-end AITO/问界 brand. AITO deliveries exceeded 420,000 in 2025 and the brand reached a symbolic one-millionth vehicle off the production line in January 2026 — a rapid ascent that vindicated Chongqing’s early policy and capital backing.
Chengdu, by contrast, has grown through collaboration rather than homegrown breakout players. The city produced about 821,000 vehicles from January to November 2025, up 26.6%, and its NEV output jumped to roughly 205,000 units, a near 200% increase year-on-year. Chengdu’s strategy leans on partnerships: a new Jetta (捷达) entity co-developed with FAW and Volkswagen has been designated as a provincial champion and aims to complete an entry-level electric line-up by 2028.
The Chengdu–Chongqing axis illustrates a broader shift from zero-sum regional rivalry to supply‑chain coordination. Provincial authorities in 2025 jointly published an initiative to knit together R&D, production and policy for smart, connected NEVs, and practical cooperation is visible in procurement meetings and supplier link-ups that boosted the regional parts matching rate above 80%.
In the Yangtze River Delta, the story is different but equally decisive. The region still accounts for roughly 28% of national vehicle output and 34.6% of NEV production in the first half of 2025, but the centre of gravity has moved inside the delta. Shanghai’s manufacturing has contracted to about 1.60 million vehicles through November 2025 — down enough to reduce its share to about 5% — while Anhui, and especially Hefei, has surged.
Hefei’s “investment‑to‑attract” model has paid off: by November 2025 the city led Chinese municipalities in NEV production with around 1.246 million units. Heavy, strategic use of capital to land NIO, Volkswagen Anhui and BYD projects turned Hefei into a mass-production hub during a window when new entrants needed cash and space to scale. Analysts caution that the Hefei playbook is harder to replicate now that industry leaders are better capitalised and land and financing conditions have shifted.
Guangdong’s long run at the top was upended after a national statistics change in 2025 that shifted the accounting basis from a firm’s registered seat to the physical production site. Guangzhou, which had topped national output from 2019 to 2023, ceded ground as production was reallocated on paper. Shenzhen, home to BYD and Huawei, briefly held the crown in 2024, but Shenzhen’s strategy is not mass manufacturing: it emphasises higher‑value upstream capabilities — chips, software and intelligent driving systems — while using satellite facilities and neighbouring industrial parks to host volume production.
BYD’s distributed production footprint illustrates that model. The company produced about 4.537 million NEVs in 2025 across multiple factories, with relatively little of that capacity actually in Shenzhen proper. Huawei, sticking to a “don’t build cars” stance, has nonetheless been a major ecosystem player: the HarmonyOS‑driven vehicle brands under its aegis delivered roughly 589,100 new cars in 2025 and reached cumulative million‑unit shipments in less than four years.
Guangzhou’s dilemma is structural: a legacy of joint‑venture assembly lines and internal‑combustion value chains has left it with a weak parts ecosystem relative to its vehicle assembly base. City planners are trying to pivot — investing in “intelligent vehicle” infrastructure, low‑altitude aviation and integrated transport systems — but the payoffs are uncertain and costly.
Taken as a whole, these shifts matter because the balance between large, coastal metropolises and rapidly growing inland clusters will shape China’s automotive competitiveness abroad. The inland rise reduces single‑point geopolitical and supply‑chain exposure, and diversified regional specialisation may accelerate China’s export push into Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East. But the next test is whether flagship products and new brands can sustain margins, technological leadership and export credibility beyond government support.
The metrics of 2025 capture a transitional year: policy choices, land constraints and early bets on corporate partners have created several viable models rather than a single dominant path. The coming years will show which model — state‑backed industrial platforms, capital‑driven clusters, or upstream tech ecosystems — delivers profitability, resilience and export traction.