Before the Pyonghwa adventure of the founder of the Moon-church (mr. Sun Myong Moon), the Moon-church was involved in plans to produce cars in Huizhou city , Guangdong province.
It was June 27, 1989, when the Unification Church held its groundbreaking ceremony in Danshui Town. Huizhou City, Guangdong Province. That was the start of a 100% foreign owned automotive enterprise in China.
Huizhou is about 80km northeast from Hong Kong. Nearby, at 5-8km is a seaport. And a railway is not far away.
Panda Motors Co. was incorporated by Korean-Americans in Delaware USA in September 1988. Charles Kim was its president.
The intention was to produce the first car in 1990, 100.000 cars by 1994 and 300.000 cars by 1995. These were amazing numbers, as here is the capacity of the joint ventures which was planned for mid-1990s: FAW-VW 150.000; SAW-Citroën 150.000; SVW 100.000; BJC 40.000; GPAC 10.000; SAW 600 and FAW Hongqi 50 cars (according Automotive News, March 4, 1991).
All the Panda cars had to be exported, as the Chinese government didn’t want to allow a 100% foreign company to sell their cars within China. With this measure the existing joint-ventures were protected.
Plan was to sell the cars in the Middle East and Africa.
The project was a showpiece venture highlighting China’s determination to attract foreign investment to modernize its manufacturing capability.
The investment was huge, 250 million US dollar. The big invester was Tong Il Industries of South Korea, a big car parts producer, using the South Korean church its teaching assets. (Yes, Tong Il means Unification). Production was expected to start in 1991.
The Huiyang County Government lent or sold their newly built government building to Panda, this headquarter was called Panda Auto City.
Panda bought in 1990 the rights to produce the Chevrolet Chevette (1975-1987), the engine tooling of a 1.6-litre engine and the stamping plant (in Fairfield, Ohio, USA), to make the body panels. The Chevette was the American variation of the so-called global T-car, like the German Opel Kadett and the Japanese Isuzu Gemini.
Plans were made to produce the sedan and a pickup version.
It was a star project (the largest steel-structure factory building in China), visited by Li Peng in February 1990 and Jiang Zemin in June 1990. In January 1991 it was Yang Shangkun who came by.
In May 1990 the American journalist Stephen Vines tried to visit the factory site. There was no plant, no infrastructure an no sign of neighboring industrial development. He writes: ‘it would be a miracle if the plant is truly on stream this side of 1992’.
After the June 4 Tian’anmen incident there was the Asian recession.
Getting into difficulties, Panda Motors tried to change the agreed conditions.
* In March 1991 they asked prime-minister Li Peng to have the rights to sell 30% of the production in China. This was rejected.
* They tried to find a multinational partner for the project. In vain.
* They changed their idea to produce the Chevette. They contacted Piaggio in Italy, for the production of Piaggio mini-vans. Piaggio would sell them outside China. A plan was made to produce 2000 to 5000 ckd light trucks.
*They tried to find a Chinese partner to form a joint-venture. They negotiated with the Second Auto Works (Dongfeng) and the Ministry of Aeronautics and Space. But the government blocked new joint ventures till the end of the century.
In May 1992 Zhou Jiahua, vice-premier, declared after visiting the company, that Panda Motors would never be allowed to start a joint venture with a local partner or to sell its product in the local market.
From that moment, Panda abandoned the idea of producing cars and became active in the land development of the entire Daya Bay area. A residential complex called Panda Garden City was developed and Panda changed its name into Panda Property Development (China) Co. Ltd.
Moon could realize his automotive plans later in North Korea: Pyonghwa.
Read more http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Tobkin/Tobkin-080613.pdf.
https://www.joc.com/maritime-news/panda-motors-project-stalls-china_19910710.html
https://min.news/en/economy/7789d2fe714d3cec43212114d845c071.html
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2008-04-03/101713680381s.shtml
The Piaggio is basically a rebadged Daihatsu built under license – not sure Daihatsu would have allowed the Panda project to happen?
The T-car was made in South Korea as the Saehan (later Daewoo) Maepsy from 1977 to 1989.
Thank you Erik for this great account of a small but important chapter in China’s auto industry history. I had heard about it many years ago but was unable to find the facts that you have so brilliantly shown here. One of my late managers at VW in the U.S., was a founding member of this venture and was a great guy to work for. But it seems that Panda encountered nothing but frustration in its efforts to produce cars down in the province of Guangdong. Unlike the Jeep brand however, the effort to succeed among a flood of foreign… Read more »
Thanks, Lawrence! Yes, there were a lot of unfulfilled dreams at that time! The idea “China business automatically means money” was often not true!