Ms. Li was born in a village right next to the factory. Back then, in front of the Ningde era, people were farmers, she says. Later, some switched to the factories in which the batteries are built, which today drive electric cars almost all large brands. Others renovated their houses to rent them to the employees or opened restaurants or kiosks. Ms. Li runs a stylish, artistic café in the former center of the city, which would not appear out of place in any European metropolis. Film posters hang on the walls, and there are books about films and the city history of Ningdes on the elegant wooden shelves. Ms. Li likes her hometown, but at the moment it is not running smoothly, she says: “Since 2023, the economy has been doing badly here.” In no other city, the contradictions of the Chinese economy become as clear as in Ningde, a port city on the east coast of China directly opposite Taiwan. It is precisely these contradictions that are the structural main reason for the spreading trade war. If you like, with two million inhabitants for Chinese standards, small town is a city of fate in the global economy. The global economy has a ningde problem, because the company has its seat, which is called “Ningde Shidai” in Chinese-ningde era. It is the far away manufacturer of batteries for electric cars in the world. In English, the company is better known as Catl, Contemporary Amperex Technology Corporation. Almost two out of five newly built electric cars drive with batteries from the Ningde era. If there is a place that would have to benefit from the high-tech strategy of President XI Jinping, then it is this city. There is probably nowhere else in the People’s Republic of such a significant high -tech company in such a small town. Catl has 30,000 employees in Ningde alone. The company’s turnover in the amount of around 46 billion euros is as large as the city’s economic output. The net win was around 6.5 billion euros last year. The tax revenues would have to bubble, the city throw out the money to the window. In southern Germany there were zebra crossing made of marble in the rich car cities. But Ningde – and that is the riddle of the Chinese economy – is not booming. “Great economic depression” This is not without irony, because Ningde was one of the first stations in Xi’s political career. In the 1980s he was a party secretary. Catl founder Robin Zeng, born in the middle of the cultural revolution in Ningde in 1968, took part in a symposium a few weeks ago, to which XI had invited the most important leadership heads in the country. XI wanted to signal that he means it well again with the private sector. Since then he has hardly missed an opportunity to present himself as a friend of the tech companies. Whether on the front page of the Chinese Volkszeitung or at the National People’s Congress, which took place in the first half of March. was in the city for several days in the spring. The group is open for a tour of the headquarters, which rises from the hills in the form of a car battery. In one of his state -of -the -art works, employees explained how the battery cells are created that drive the electric cars of the world. In the city the F.A.Z. spoken to dozens of people. Whether in conversation with café operators such as Ms. Li, with a teacher, a local reporter, a handful of taxi drivers or in a local karao wire pub with a Catl employee-the same picture always arises: Catl has catapulted the city forward for years, you are proud of the company. But there has been a crisis for two years. Mrs. Li in front of her cafésun Yao “three years ago I earned 700 to 800 Yuan a day by just traveling near Ningde era,” says a taxi driver. The equivalent is around 100 euros. “Now my daily income is still half as big.” Ningde is “in great economic depression, the prices have fallen heavily,” says the employee of an energy company. “There are fewer and fewer chances to find jobs here. This year it feels like it was like before the Ningde era.” If you earn 600 euros a month, you can count yourself lucky, she says. The statutory minimum wage in the city is around 230 euros. Café operator Li pays her employee 450 to 550 euros. According to the Chinese real estate side Anjuke, the prices for newly built apartments fell for a fifth last year. According to official figures, Ningdes Economy grew only by around one percent last year. China’s technology industry flourishes the numbers make it clear how big the imbalance is. China’s technology industry is flourishing, the export is the engine of the second largest economy in the world. It has grown and grown in recent years, while the vehicle – that is, the economy around it – has not kept pace. Now it is like installing Catl’s high-performance batteries into one of the old VW-Santanas that used to dominate China’s streets. However, the established economies such as the USA and Germany now have too small engines for their pick-ups and limousines. US President Donald Trump says he wants to upgrade his own engine with his tariffs. However, it appears that he will get to the frontal accident of his weakening pick-up with the upgraded Catl-Santana. Whoever wins is not agreed. However, the danger is that both of the accident will go out of serious injuries. In Ningde, Ms. Fan finds, people should be more grateful. She is a teacher at a local university who cooperates closely with Catl. The city and the company pay part of the semester fees for Catl employees so that they remain at least during the three years of studying in the company. “Without Ningde era, Ningde would probably still be poor.” She raves about XI Jinping and his work in the city. Xi’s wife, a well -known singer, filed with the dealers on the market. “No matter who you are, even the big people still have the same life as the simple people,” she says. However, she does not drive Santana, but climbs to her Mercedes SUV. Ms. Fans Optimism is an exception. A crossing in the city center of Ningdesun Yaochina Techboom hardly arrives in the width of the population because the corporations create few simple jobs. CATL employees run the F.A.Z. through the company’s so-called Z-factory, which has a capacity of 40 gigawatt hours a year. This is enough to supply a few hundred thousand cars with battery cells. 216 people work in every shift, they say. Even with full occupancy in three layers, only around 650 factory employees are needed a year to produce the heart for hundreds of thousands of cars. It is not a comparison with the migrations that have been taking place in engine works in Germany every day for decades. In Stuttgart it is loud and smells of oil. A few robots whir in Ningde, and nothing smells of anything. Some employees monitor Kuka and ABB industrial robots. The employees explain the nine production steps. It is about anodes, cathodes, electrolytes and mixtures, coatings, compressions, laser welding. If you are not a subject and have the English technical terms at hand, quickly lose your thread. Logically, photos are not allowed. After all, not only the former European battery hope Northvolt failed to get the battery cell production under control. In comparison to other Chinese companies, Catl is open. Managers give interviews that the press office responds to inquiries. However, unlike in the western large corporations, the international arm of the press department consists of just two people. If at all, an international correspondent gets lost to Ningde once a month. The two lead through the showroom in the entrance area of the battery office, where 10,000 people work. They present the different types of batteries that CATL installed. Some are more expensive with larger energy density, others cheaper and can store less electricity. The group has a total of 13 works, two of them outside of China in Europe, Thuringia and Hungary. Another is created in Indonesia. With Tesla and Ford, there are licensing models that produce US carmakers, CATL provides the technology. For further expansion, the group collects just under five billion euros on the stock exchange in Hong Kong. Batteries from Ningde can be found not only in cars, but also in buses, trucks, ships and aircraft. The principle of chocolate panel for cars also has solutions such as battery exchange on offer. The exchange process in a station on the group takes 80 seconds. When you are traveling in the city, drivers can use small, light batteries for short distances. For longer trips, get larger batteries. Catl calls it the principle of chocolate panel. The company wants to build thousands of such stations. There could also be a spectacular purchase soon. The company is negotiating with the electric car start-up NIO about taking over its battery exchange network with thousands of stations across the country, says a person of the F.A.Z. The company does not want to comment. Catl also secures other parts of the added value. The group is trying to become better known. China’s car brands know many Chinese, the battery giants from Ningde less. The company therefore sponsors football broadcasts, a team films an influencer in the showroom that raps the car brands in which catl batteries are. It is reminiscent of the legendary “Intel Inside” campaign with which the semiconductor manufacturer promoted his chips. As always with Chinese corporations, the question also swings in Ningde how much communist party is in Catl. The US Department of Defense declared Ningde era as a “Chinese military company” a few months ago, Catl considers the name to be a mistake. In Ningde there is a room directly to the showroom in which the cell of the Communist Party presents its work. It looks a bit like the presentation of a union on Chinese steroids. It is about excursions, particularly well -deserved employees and learning meetings about the party teaching and the latest thoughts of XI. The room is visibly uncomfortable for the two PR employees. They say that the party cell is mandatory that group boss Zeng is not a party member. However, he was, today’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said “a high-ranking member of the unit front of the Communist Party”. It meant that, like so many entrepreneurs, Zeng, like so many entrepreneurs, participates in the political consultation conference, a body that met once a year shortly before the national folk congress in Beijing and is supposed to advise politics. So far, the car company of this world is not afraid. In front of the central parking vehicles of more than a dozen car brands, western and Chinese. Catl batteries are in all of them. Only from Mercedes is a combustion engine in the row. If you receive the car managers, of course you want to pick them up in your vehicle, explains a spokesman. Mercedes doesn’t have a good electric car, he says. He does not seem to be aware of how sharp his verdict is. A small shop in the center of Ningdessun Yao -actually they are grateful to the Germans. BMW was the first customer almost a decades and a half ago. One of the factories on the huge company premises, which extends on two banks of a lake, is still called “BMW factory”. A decades and a half ago, the legend wants it, the later VW boss Herbert Diess was looking for a battery manufacturer for his electric cars. Nowhere did he find it until he pushed on Robin Zeng. From the late 1990s, the doctor of electrical engineers had built up the battery manufacturer ATL, which supplied electronics producers. He later sold it to a Japanese company. In 2011 he hung a c in front to the English name and started in the Ningde era. His group is more important on the stock exchange than all German car manufacturers, even if it was very affected by the stock exchange quake. Zeng, whose assets are estimated to be around 35 billion euros in front of the crash, is richer than every German carilliarist, even the BMW heirs or the Porsches. The relationship between the city and the company has a similarly divided effect as one would expect in Germany. On the one hand, people are proud to live in the city of Ningde era. The city has opened up to the richest cities in the province through the Catl boom and made it into the list of the 100 most important cities in China. “I live in the same housing estate as Robin Zeng’s sister,” says a resident. “In addition to my housing estate, Zeng bought a house,” says another. Milliardär Zeng is a similar identification figure as the patriarchs of family businesses in the Black Forest. There are conflicts with the oversized neighbor. When the group built its first factories, there were protests by the villagers, according to a report by a local author, which the F.A.Z. viewed. It was about the impending pollution and the amount of the financial compensation that the residents demanded from the government. The farmers operated breeding ponds in the field of the planned factory. Although the lease for the breeding ponds tripled, the government never raised its offer of around 5000 euros per hectare, the author writes. Others did not want to give up their breeding ponds out of pride. Out of despair, one of the farmers fell into the sea. He was saved and put into prison, the report says. Later a mental illness was diagnosed with him, and more residents feel more economically pushed to the edge of the topic. Some of the interlocutors look jealous of the residential complexes that Catl built for his employees. According to the real estate side, the apartments there cost the equivalent of around 2200 euros per square meter, twice the average price in the city. A 100-square-meter apartment costs 200 to 400 euros in rental per month in the city center. At least 450 euros will be shown for the CATL apartments. “I have heard of some residents who complain because the prices and living costs have risen due to Catl,” says Ms. Lei, a reporter at a local television station, who directly adds that Catl has brought a lot of wealth. The city may be a center of global electric carevolution, but it has remained a provincial nest. In the city’s most expensive hotel, in which a celebrity of security guards increases on the treadmill in the morning, there are rooms for less than 100 euros a night. In the evening in a karaoke bar, three employees celebrate their first working day at Catl with their department head. There are hookahs on the tables, there is beer and tea, pigs and rabbit meat after sicuan preparation. The three are in early twenties, come from Guizhou, a poor province in southern China, and will test the batteries in the future. None of them were yet abroad. In the restaurants of the city there are meals for the convertered one euro. Western foreigners are so rare here that some residents greet them curiously. The only one that the F.A.Z. Coming in the city in the four days, is a German BMW battery specialist who is currently on the way back to Germany and takes the express train back to Shanghai. The world capital of the battery is a small place and very far from Munich.
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