CHINA'S CARMAKERS are embracing next-generation cleaner-car technology, motivated more by profit and pragmatism than any special love for the planet.
Rising manufacturers such as Chery Automobile and Geely are developing or launching hybrid, electric and other alternative-energy vehicles, betting that China can follow its successes in mobile phones and digital technology by becoming a leader in greener cars.
On Sunday at Auto China, China's largest motor show, Geely showed an electric car with the slogan "I'm going green" emblazoned on the side, which it said it planned to introduce next year.
Shanghai Automotive, or SAIC, China's largest domestic carmaker, said it would be producing more than 10,000 hybrid cars a year by 2010, including those made by its joint venture partners, General Motors and Volkswagen. Chery premiered a planned hybrid that it will pilot at the Olympic games.
Their belief - and that of their supporters in government - is that China is positioned to vault past existing automotive models into the new technologies, which require regulators' support in areas such as tax policy and investment in new technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells.
Given China's size and ability to set standards, the argument goes, they might then dominate the next generation of carmaking as well as key supplier industries such as lithium-ion batteries.
"Chinese manufacturers all want the next big opportunity to leapfrog their competitors," says Jian Sun, a partner with AT Kearney in Shanghai.
China is due to eclipse the US as the world's largest car market in about a decade but this is contributing to heavy pollution and urban congestion.
However, the local industry's push into greener cars appears to be motivated mostly by China's preoccupation with energy security and a desire to build a world-class auto industry.
"China is a country that is short of energy," says Jin Yibo, Chery's assistant general manager.
"Chery believes this is the future trend of the Chinese automobile industry."
Carmakers also need to raise their game as weak demand in the US and Europe makes China's burgeoning market a central competitive arena.
"Chinese carmakers are trying to move up the value chain and the brand-positioning chain," says Michael Dunne, of consultancy JD Power. Financial Times
Fresh debate on biofuel-food price link
Rick Wagoner, General Motors' chairman and chief
executive, has dismissed United Nations research that links biofuel
production to rising food prices as "shockingly misinformed".
The blunt assessment by the head of the world's largest car company reinvigorates intense debate about the costs and benefits of biofuels, a burgeoning industry some analysts say crowds out food production.
"If you look at what's causing higher fuel prices, the cost of corn is a very small part of that," Wagoner said at a trade show in China.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has linked biofuels production - alongside factors such as crop failures and the falling dollar - to the spike in world food prices. The agency has ordered research on the subject in advance of a summit on world food security intended to take place in Rome in June.
But Wagoner said: "Oil prices are a far bigger driver of food prices than ethanol."
While the EU has mandated 10 per cent use of biofuels by 2020, the issue increasingly splits political opinion. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, last week attributed rising food prices to bad agricultural policies and changing eating habits in the developing world, but Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, has expressed concern about their effect on the food supply. GM produces about a million "flex-fuel" vehicles in the US each year. Its European Saab brand has several models able to use biofuels.