BYD overtakes Tesla in quarterly EV sales, reflecting China’s rapid industrial upgrade

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD Co overtook US-based Tesla Inc to become the world's biggest EV maker in the fourth quarter of 2023 for the first time, according to latest data from the companies. This had added another milestone to a historical year for China's auto industry as it's poised to propel China to become the world's biggest auto exporter. 

BYD's success, which also include an impressive growth rate throughout 2023 that outpaced Tesla and other EV makers, is a microcosm of the achievement in China's upgrade of its vast manufacturing industry, export sector and the domestic market - all crucial to China's high-quality development, experts said. 

On Tuesday US time, Tesla said that it delivered 484,500 EVs in the final quarter of 2023, which also marked a new record for the company. However, that means BYD, which said on Monday that it had sold about 526,400 EVs during the same period, overtook Tesla to become the world's biggest EV maker in the fourth quarter of the year for the first time.

For the whole year of 2023, Tesla retained its spot as the biggest EV maker, as it delivered a total of 1.8 million EVs, larger than BYD's total sales of about 1.57 million units. Still, BYD's recorded a year-on-year sales growth rate of 73 percent for 2023, far outpacing Tesla's sales growth of 38 percent. Such sales growth rate has also led many to speculate that BYD will surpass Tesla to become the world's biggest EV maker in 2024. 

This is also significant considering that BYD's market capitalization, at 573.17 billion yuan ($80.21 billion) as of Wednesday, represents only a fraction of Tesla's $778.42 billion. Over the past six months, BYD's shares dropped by 28.85 percent, while Tesla's shares fell by 11.22 percent. 

Despite such a huge gap in the financial market, analysts expect that BYD is well positioned to maintain its lead in EV sales in 2024 over Tesla. 

Hu Qimu, a deputy secretary-general of the digital-real economies integration Forum 50, said BYD's success is due to a slew of factors, including its own technological innovation, major policy support for industrial upgrading, a complete and stable domestic supply chain - which all helped BYD to make high-quality but affordable EVs. 

"Given all these factors, it is no wonder that BYD surpasses Tesla," Hu told the Global Times on Wednesday.  

In a statement it sent to the Global Times, BYD noted that it has grown to be the world's biggest EV company, and since its passenger car export strategy in May 2021, it has exported to 58 countries and regions around the world.

"Going forward, BYD will continue to promote the overseas expansion of passenger cars and continue to accelerate the global expansion of new-energy passenger cars," the company said. 

BYD's milestone also came as China's whole EV sector saw a bumper year in 2023. According to the latest data from the China Association of Automobile Manufactures, in the first 11 months of 2023, China's exports of new-energy vehicles jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to 1.09 million units. Thanks to such rapid growth, China's total auto exports reached 4.41 units, up 58 percent year-on-year and outnumbering Japan's 3.99 million units during the same period. 

This also represents a landmark event for China's auto industry as it becomes the world's biggest auto exporter after surpassing Japan in 2023 and Germany in 2022 - two countries that had been dominating the world's auto market for decades. 

Industrial upgrading

The success of BYD as well as the whole Chinese EV sector directly reflect solid progress China has made in relentlessly pushing for industrial upgrade and high-quality development, experts said.

Cui Dongshu, secretary general of China Passenger Car Association, said BYD and other Chinese EV makers have benefited greatly from China's vast domestic market as well as the country's efforts to boost industrial transformation and upgrade. 

"The biggest factor behind Chinese EV's success is the technological transformation. In addition, the Chinese market also offered a huge advantage for them to grow," Cui told the Global Times on Wednesday, noting that China's auto industry, especially the EV sector, has seen relatively better growth than other countries around the world thanks to China's policy supports. 

For its success, BYD also pointed to various policies, including China's continued reform and opening-up, support for private businesses and the building of a new development model. 

"Looking back, we feel more and more strongly that it was the reform and opening-up that gave birth to BYD, and it was the new development concept that created huge opportunities that strengthened BYD," the company said in the statement.

Policy support for the EV sector is just part of China's broader effort to transform and upgrade its industrial system, which has become a top priority in the pursuit of high-quality development. The Central Economic Work Conference held in December, which set priorities for economic work for 2024, listed the development of a modern industrial system led by innovation as a top priority.

Hu said that China's industrial transformation and upgrade has made great strides. "Through industrial transformation and upgrade, our international competitiveness is also strengthening and in terms of the macroeconomic situation, all three main drivers have been revitalized," he said. 

One example of industrial upgrade revitalizing China's main economic drivers is the exports of EVs. Lithium batteries and solar panels became a highlight of China's exports in 2023, and they have been described as "the new three items" of China's exports sector, a drastic shift from the previous "three items" of China's exports - clothes, furniture and electronics. 

In the first three quarters of 2023, total exports of "the three new items" jumped by 41.7 percent year-on-year, compared to a mere 0.6 percent in China's total exports during the period due to weak external demand. 

Ice & snow world

A 512.6-meter-long ice slide makes its debut in the Changchun Ice and Snow New World in Changchun, Northeast China's Jilin Province, on December 12, 2023. The Changchun Ice and Snow New World opened its doors to visitors on December 12. Photo: VCG

Traditional Chinese adage boosts Zhang’s title defense

China's mixed martial arts (MMA) athlete Zhang Weili has once again proven that she's the best women's MMA strawweight fighter in the world with a unanimous decision win over Amanda Lemos in the co-main event at the UFC 292 on August 20.

Currently in Beijing after the fight, in which she defended her title for the first time since her second championship win, Zhang is now focused on blending Chinese culture into her future tactics. 

Zhang applauded her opponent's tenacity, noting that credit is due to Lemos' persistence.

"There were a few times when I would see her eyes close when I was punching her, but later her eyes would open up again. I thought that her willpower was great," Zhang told the Global Times in an interview.

In Zhang's view, Lemos, known for her jiu-jitsu skills, is one of the most tenacious opponents she has encountered in recent years, and if the roles were reversed, she doubts she would have withstood such an onslaught of heavy punches. 

"Nearly everyone thinks that I'm poor at ground skills, but I actually won the first 10 matches of my career on the ground," Zhang noted as her win came thanks to her overpowering ground-fighting skills, which involves hand-to-hand combat, against Lemos.

As far as the moniker "hexagon warrior" bestowed upon her by fans for her well-rounded skill set, Zhang considers as a humbling gesture.

"I'm yet to be a hexagon warrior but I'm trying my best to be one," Zhang said. "I think my skills, either ground skills or stand-up combat skills or agility, still need to be honed."

Tactic without tactics

She said the tactic employed against Lemos was to wrap around her "like water" and not give her too much space in any aspect. Using the "tactic without tactics" formula allows her better control of the situation.

The 34-year-old, who has dominated in nearly all of her matches outside of her two losses to Rose Namajunas of the US, has woven the tapestry of Chinese culture into her fighting approach beyond the octagon.

"Now I fight by using a tactic which does not involve any specific tactics," Zhang told the Global Times. 

While on the face of it, Zhang's approach may appear strange, it is credited to the concept "Be water, my friend," famously coined by martial artist Bruce Lee, noting this philosophy guides her movements, emphasizing fluidity and adaptability in the face of adversity.

"I learned this concept at a very young age but it wasn't until recent years that I have developed a deeper understanding of what 'be water' means, which I can blend it into my tactics rather than previously trying to stick to one planned tactic," Zhang said. 

She describes her fighting style as possessing both fluid and solid qualities, allowing her to be agile and efficient. Her use of traditional Chinese martial arts principles, such as the balance of yin, which means something of darkness, and yang, which means life and brightness, has given her a unique edge in the ring. 

"I have benefited a lot from Chinese culture. I hope more people can learn from it and then improve themselves. It's more about studying and learning how to comprehend," she told the Global Times. 

"It's important to learn from what the ancestors have left us, such as sincerity and modesty, and know how to be respectful and grateful," said Zhang. 

Rose to fame

Born in Handan, a city in North China's Hebei Province, Zhang's formative years were characterized by discipline and dedication. 

Zhang was introduced to martial arts at the age of 12. Little did they know that this early influence of modesty and discipline would set the stage for a remarkable athletic journey.

It was not common for girls to seriously pursue martial arts in China, but Zhang's passion burned brighter than the obstacles in her path. She trained diligently, determined to become a skilled fighter.

But it was her entry into the Ultimate Fighting Championship that truly catapulted her into the MMA spotlight. 

Zhang's rise to prominence has not only made her a symbol of hope and empowerment for aspiring fighters in China but also a trailblazer in women's MMA globally. Her influence extends far beyond the ring, as she continues to inspire the next generation of fighters, both in China and around the world. 

Zhang spent some time in 2022 learning tai chi from a master in her hometown.

"When I would use force while wrestling, it would always feel especially hard, but now with the idea of tai chi, everything is curved - there is rigidity and flexibility," Zhang said, noting that when incorporating Tai Chi into her training routine made her realize that wrestling also had soft qualities.

Zhang's winning form has also triggered an increasing number of young people participating in MMA in China. 

It also gives pause to those who claim that championships are only built on the failures of many, which is antithetical to traditional Chinese culture's advocacy for securing victories through subduing opponents without fighting rather than an emphasis on the eventual victory.

"I don't think it is accurate to say that championships are based on the failures of many," Zhang told the Global Times. 

"As long as you practice, at the very least, you will learn a lot from it," she said.

Toxic explosion in Nebraska shows US unable to take issues affecting public security seriously: experts

Barely two months after an explosion in Louisiana, a train carrying toxic perchloric acid has exploded in a Nebraska rail yard on Thursday, prompting evacuation orders to be issued, as huge plumes are seen engulfing the city. Experts said the incident shows the US has been unable to take seriously and overcome major issues affecting public safety and the environment and ecology in the country.

The incident happened on Union Pacific Railroad tracks in the city of North Platte. North Platte Volunteer Fire Department announced that they would order those living in the area to evacuate due to the toxic smoke from the railroad, according to media reports.

In a post on social media platforms, it said that "Emergency evacuation for the area between splinter and front North of railroad track due fire at the railroad involving heavy toxic smoke."

In a statement to DailyMail.com, Union Pacific Railroad said that an explosion occurred inside a container which resulted in several railcars catching fire. The railcar did not derail, the company said, and had been in the yard for several hours.

Union Pacific said that one of the containers contained a hazardous chemical called perchloric acid, according to Daily Mail.

Perchloric is a hazardous material used in food, drugs and biocidal products, as well as explosives, according to the report.

Two months ago, a fire at a Louisiana chemical plant triggered explosions that shook homes several miles away and sent flames and smoke billowing into the air in mid-July, prompting emergency officials to urge a few hundred nearby residents to shelter indoors for several hours and to turn off their air conditioners, the Associated Press reported.

Antiquated infrastructure and the outdated transportation were one factor. Another was a flawed system of governance in the US transport industry, experts noted. There is no doubt that the US has serious loopholes in the transportation management of hazardous substances, and the relevant error correction mechanism is in fact not effective, which means that this kind of thing will occur in the future, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Friday.

This shows that the US has been unable to take seriously and overcome serious and major issues affecting public safety and the environment and ecology in the country, Li said. "It must be said that this is a great irony to the self-proclaimed internal governance of the most advanced country in the world."

Analysts said that the frequent occurrence of similar incidents shows that the error correction mechanism in the US has failed. Apart from this, racism and the proliferation of guns are also clear examples of the failure of error correction mechanisms, experts noted.

China takes proactive role in de-escalation efforts amid Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Even since the eruption of the recent Israeli-Palestine conflict, China has taken a proactive role in de-escalation, collaborating with the international community to spare efforts to bring an end to the fighting, safeguard civilian lives, and provide humanitarian aid.

In recent days, the Chinese Government's Special Envoy on the Middle East Issue Zhai Jun has made relentless trips to Middle Eastern countries including Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Jordan in a diplomatic effort to de-escalate the situation and ease hostilities. 

Meanwhile, in response to the worsening humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, the China International Development Cooperation Agency has pledged an additional 15 million yuan ($2.05 million) in emergency humanitarian supplies. This aid aims to assist those affected by the conflict, in addition to previously allocated $1 million in cash assistance through the Palestinian National Authority and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.

During a meeting with Zhai on Sunday in Amman, the capital of Jordan, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini, noted that the UNRWA regards China as an important partner, thanks China for its long-standing political support and financial assistance to the UNRWA, appreciates China's emergency humanitarian assistance to Gaza since the conflict, and is willing to strengthen cooperation with China to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as soon as possible.

UNRWA, which was founded in 1949, is mandated to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees. The organization relies on voluntary contributions to finance its operations.

At the Wednesday media briefing, China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that "China has no selfish interests in the Palestinian-Israeli issue. We stand for the protection of civilians, a ceasefire and an end to fighting, the opening of humanitarian relief corridors, the prevention of a greater humanitarian crisis, the resumption of political dialogue and negotiation, and the return of the Palestinian issue to the right track of the two-state solution so as to achieve lasting peace and stability in the Middle East."

"As [China assumes] the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council this month and a responsible member of the international community, China will continue to work with the international community to ease the situation, protect civilians, advance humanitarian assistance, and resume peace talks," he said.

ASML maintains campus recruitment pace in China, shows its unwillingness to lose market share

Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML started its 2024 campus recruitment program in China on Tuesday, with key positions related to scanners, e-beams and computational lithography.

The recruitment program this year, which is about the same size as that of last year, shows that the company is staying committed to the Chinese market, despite geopolitical headwinds that are affecting the global chip supply chain, a Chinese analyst said.

The company, which had net global sales revenue of 21.2 billion euros ($22.46 billion) in 2022, said it plans to hire some 200 professionals this year, roughly the same as last year, indicating steady growth in its Chinese business.

"The continuous hiring by ASML at this critical juncture implies the company's confidence in China's vast market and its unwillingness to lose market share here," Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Beijing-based Information Consumption Alliance, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"Even if sales for certain machines are blocked in the future, the company will still need employees to maintain its existing fleet of lithography machines in China and service customers," Xiang said. 

Under new Dutch export control regulations that took effect on September 1, the company is required to have licenses to continue shipments of chip tools to China. 

The company said it has the required licenses for China-bound shipments of the NXT:2000i and subsequent systems until the end of 2023.

On June 30, the Dutch government announced a ministerial order restricting exports of certain advanced semiconductor equipment, a move widely believed to target China due to pressure from the US.

ASML sells about 80 Deep Ultraviolet Lithography machines to China each year, accounting for around 15 percent of the company's revenue, an analyst said.

Isolating China completely through export controls is not a viable approach, ASML CEO Peter Wennink emphasized during an interview.

China and the Netherlands have maintained communication on chip equipment export controls and China has urged the Netherlands not to abuse export control measures regarding semiconductor products, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.

In 2000, the Dutch giant that makes lithography machines established ASML China and built its first office in the country. After 23 years of development, the company now has more than 1,600 employees and 16 offices in China.

New fossil suggests echolocation evolved early in whales

A roughly 27-million-year-old fossilized skull echoes growing evidence that ancient whales could navigate using high-frequency sound.

Discovered over a decade ago in a drainage ditch by an amateur fossil hunter on the South Carolina coast, the skull belongs to an early toothed whale. The fossil is so well-preserved that it includes rare inner ear bones similar to those found in modern whales and dolphins. Inspired by the Latin for “echo hunter,” scientists have now named the ancient whale Echovenator sandersi.
“It suggests that the earliest toothed whales could hear high-frequency sounds,” which is essential for echolocation, says Morgan Churchill, an anatomist at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury. Churchill and his colleagues describe the specimen online August 4 in Current Biology.

Modern whales are divided on the sound spectrum. Toothed whales, such as orcas and porpoises, use high-frequency clicking sounds to sense predators and prey.

Filter-feeding baleen whales, on the other hand, use low-frequency sound for long-distance communication. Around 35 million years ago, the two groups split, and E. sandersi emerged soon after.

CT scans show that E. sandersi had a few features indicative of ultrasonic hearing in modern whales and dolphins. Most importantly, it had a spiraling inner ear bone with wide curves and a long bony support structure, both of which allow a greater sensitivity to higher-frequency sound. A small nerve canal probably transmitted sound signals to the brain.
“Scientists have long suspected that early toothed whales could produce the high-frequency sounds needed for echolocation based on features on their skulls,” says Travis Park of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Previous work points to early toothed whales sensing those high frequencies. Park and his colleagues reported in April in Biology Letters the discovery of a 26-million-year-old lone ear bone showing signs of high-frequency hearing. But it wasn’t connected to a skull and, thus, couldn’t be tied to a specific whale species.

Tracing inner ear features in CT scans of 24 ancient and modern whales, including E. sandersi, plus two hippos, whales’ closest living relatives, Churchill’s team ups the ante. Because primitive versions of the bony spiral and nerve canal appeared before the first known toothed whale, the researchers suggest that rudimentary high-frequency hearing might have emerged in the common ancestor of toothed and baleen whales at least 43 million years ago. If so, baleen whales lost their high-frequency hearing at some point. Determining whether that’s truly the case requires more analysis and a wider array of fossil data, says Park, who’s unconvinced.

But there is growing consensus that the first toothed whales could hear and produce sounds at high-frequency ranges. The skull of a 28-million-year-old toothed whale also suggests that such animals could make high-frequency calls (SN: 4/19/14, p. 6). “The next step is to look at when their brains got big enough to process echolocation signals,” says Nicholas Pyenson, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History who was not affiliated with the study. “This is great, but there’s more to be done.”

Arctic sea ice shrinks to second-lowest low on record

Sea ice around the North Pole has reached its second-lowest low on record, tying with 2007, scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced September 15.

Arctic sea ice reached its expected low point for the year on September 10, bottoming out at an area of 4.14 million square kilometers. That’s well below the 1981 through 2010 average of 6.22 million square kilometers, though above the record-lowest extent of 3.39 million square kilometers, set in 2012.

The silver-medal finish came after a summer of relatively cool temperatures, cloudy skies and stormy weather — conditions that typically limit sea ice shrinkage. The lack of ice probably arose from a poor starting position: The melt season began with the smallest maximum sea ice extent on record.

Shrinking sea ice can speed up warming, threaten Arctic species and spread pollution.

Chimps, other apes take mind reading to humanlike level

Apes understand what others believe to be true. What’s more, they realize that those beliefs can be wrong, researchers say. To make this discovery, researchers devised experiments involving a concealed, gorilla-suited person or a squirreled-away rock that had been moved from their original hiding places — something the apes knew, but a person looking for King Kong or the stone didn’t.

“Apes anticipated that an individual would search for an object where he last saw it, even though the apes knew that the object was no longer there,” says evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye.
If this first-of-its-kind finding holds up, it means that chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans can understand that others’ actions sometimes reflect mistaken assumptions about reality. Apes’ grasp of others’ false beliefs roughly equals that of human 2-year-olds tested in much the same way, say Krupenye of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues.

Considering their targeted gazes during brief experiments, apes must rapidly assess others’ beliefs about the world in wild and captive communities, the researchers propose in the October 7 Science. Understanding the concept of false beliefs helps wild and captive chimps deceive their comrades, such as hiding food from those who don’t share, Krupenye suggests.

Experiments included 41 apes — 19 chimps, 15 bonobos and seven orangutans. These animals had been born in captivity and lived in open enclosures at research centers in Germany and Japan. Apes watched two short videos designed to grab their attention. In one, a person in a King Kong gorilla suit hides in one of two haystacks while a man watches. After the man leaves through a door, King Kong runs away. Then the man returns and looks for King Kong. In a second video, a man returns for a stone that King Kong stole from him and hid in one of two boxes while the man watched. During the man’s absence, however, King Kong runs off with the stone or, in another version, moves the stone from one box to the other.

A camera equipped with an eye-tracking sensor revealed that, when the man in these videos returned, apes usually looked first at where King Kong or the stone had initially been hidden. They also spent more time looking at those initial locations than at any other spots in the videos. Those behaviors indicate that the apes assumed the man would return to those same spots based on where he had last seen what he was looking for. Of 29 animals that viewed both videos, gazes of 23 indicated that they expected the man in one or both scenarios to hold a false belief, the researchers say.
Krupenye’s team shows for the first time that a nonhuman animal can track others’ false beliefs, agrees psychologist Amanda Seed of the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland. But it has yet to be demonstrated that apes, like humans, can act on such knowledge, say by hiding food from others, she adds. It’s also unclear whether, aside from knowing where an observer will look for an item, apes truly know that the object is no longer there, Seed says. Further experiments could see if apes express surprise upon seeing an observer find an item hidden in its original location after it had been moved, she suggests.

An ability to infer what others are thinking, dubbed “theory of mind” by psychologists (SN Online: 3/27/13), likely evolved in ancient ancestors of humans and apes, writes primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta in the same issue of Science. Those ancestors lived in increasingly complex communities where it paid to predict accurately how others would behave, he proposes.

Yale University psychologist Laurie Santos isn’t so sure apes track false beliefs. Previous research has consistently indicated that no nonhuman animals monitor others’ beliefs, even on tasks similar to those used by Krupenye’s team, Santos says. In the new study, she adds, apes may have realized that an observer was ignorant about an object’s new location but not that he had false expectations about where to find it.

Krupenye disagrees. “The apes specifically anticipated that the actor in the video would search for an object where we humans know the actor falsely believed the object to be,” he says.

Losing tropical forest might raise risks of human skin ulcers, deformed bones

Clearing tropical forests may raise the risk of people being exposed to a gruesome disease called Buruli ulcer, a new study suggests.

Mycobacterium ulcerans, the bacteria that cause Buruli skin lesions and bone deformities, can thrive in a wide range of wild creatures, especially tiny insects grazing on freshwater algae, says Aaron Morris, now at Imperial College London. Surveying more than 3,600 invertebrates and fish from both pristine forests and cleared land in French Guiana, Morris and colleagues found the bacteria flourishing in altered landscapes. As species are lost from once-complex food webs, there’s an intermediate zone where bacteria-friendly species thrive, Morris and colleagues propose online December 7 in Science Advances.
When people push into tropical forests to build farms, roads and towns, the food web of the forest grows simpler, Morris says. Aquatic predators that once kept smaller predators and grazers in check have dwindled, the analysis suggests. This shift in the food web allows some grazers that bacteria multiply abundantly in to thrive in the environment. Thus people might face more risk of picking up the disease. (The exact routes of transmission aren’t clear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

Yet the relationship between forest loss and bacterial boom times isn’t a straight line, the researchers found. As people change the landscape even more drastically toward urbanization, the niches for the bacteria-carriers appears to start shrinking again. This may mean that some of the bacteria’s favorite hosts are dwindling away, too.

Other work has examined the way that landscape change affects people’s risks of catching infectious diseases, says Kate Jones of University College London, who has studied Lassa fever in Africa. Yet she cautions that recent research suggests that the interplay of infectious disease and disturbance depends strongly on the location. Some evidence has linked degraded ecosystems to rising numbers of small rodents that spread, for instance, Lyme disease. But in cases with diseases spread by monkeys and apes, their habitat needs mean they tend to be among the first animals to disappear as people take over land, taking particular disease risks with them.

Just how the rise in bacteria for Buruli ulcer translates into numbers of human cases will take more study. The new study focused on the animals and landscape and did not look at human prevalence of the disease. Worldwide, some 5,000 to 6,000 new cases of Buruli ulcer are reported each year from a total of 15 countries, says the CDC. The disease is also found in at least 18 more countries not included in the statistics. Buruli ulcer can occur in temperate as well as tropical regions but is especially a risk for children and young teens in sub-Saharan Africa.