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South Africa’s colonial history, and the fact that its democracy was born into a unipolar global order, explains why the country’s business community and corporate culture remain disproportionately Western-oriented in their outlook, networks, investment strategies, and commercial relationships, even as the centre of gravity of the global economy shifts increasingly towards Asia, particularly China. But three decades after 1994, the world has changed into a new bipolar order in which China rivals the West for global dominance. That is a change in the global balance of power from which South Africa might draw significant advantages if a bridge from rural poverty to a middle-class future is ever to be built for millions of poor South Africans.

A key five-point argument on China made by The Common Sense since its inception has been the following.

1. South African business is too Western-focused. Corporate South Africa has historically looked towards London, New York, and Europe for investment, partnerships, technology, and commercial opportunities. It has been slower to recognise the scale of opportunities emerging in China.
2. The emerging bipolar world creates opportunities. As the United States and China compete for economic, technological, and strategic influence, South Africa is well positioned to maintain productive relationships with both rather than becoming exclusively dependent on either.
3. China represents an enormous commercial opportunity. Its industrial economy, consumer market, infrastructure expertise, technology companies, and capital resources offer South African businesses opportunities for exports, investment, partnerships, and expansion.
4. South Africa can learn from China’s development. China’s focus on industrialisation, infrastructure, productivity, and economic competitiveness offers practical lessons for a South African economy struggling with low investment and weak growth.
5. Commercial pragmatism should prevail over geopolitical sentiment. South African businesses should assess opportunities in China according to their commercial merits rather than inherited Western assumptions or ideological preferences.

In a very practical sense, South Africans would seem to go along with this, at least insofar as their new car preferences suggest. And what has happened with regard to those preferences, and more importantly, the industrial backstory behind why these have shifted, might just hint at the smallest tip of what may accrue to South Africa from the expansion of China’s economic and industrial footprint in the country.

In the first eight months of 2026, Chinese car brands sold 83 265 vehicles. That was 64.1% more than a year earlier! And those sales now account for 20.4% of new car sales, compared to 2.7% in 2020.

See the seven-year trendline for Chinese car sales on the chart below.

The chart below suggests some of the reasons why that has happened. It compares car price inflation in South Africa to headline inflation between 2020 and 2026. The two lines move chiefly in unison, but the new car price number then dives below the headline number just as Chinese sales start to take off.

What is happening there, once you get past exchange rates, the strengthening currency, and an abatement of global chip shortages, is that China is simply supplying better products at a better price point than the old, largely Western-dominated auto sector is, offering more car for less money, which forces every other brand to compete on price accordingly.

Now, car sales do not a country or economy make, and this report is not actually about cars. It is about something much more important, which is the nature and growth of the industrial base behind China’s car industry, its ability to outcompete the West, and the lessons and opportunities that may flow to South Africa from that. Extrapolate, therefore, what is sitting behind that car data (better products, superior tech, and more efficient manufacturing and industrial processes) and then match that with scale.

China's industrial expansion over the past four decades has been extraordinary in both its speed and scale, fundamentally altering the balance of global economic power.

The chart below shows Chinese versus American manufacturing output as a share of global manufacturing output since 1980.

The transformation has extended far beyond the production of inexpensive consumer goods. China has progressively moved into sophisticated engineering, advanced manufacturing, robotics, electronics, telecommunications equipment, electric vehicles, batteries, and renewable energy technologies.

Consider, for example, that according to the International Energy Agency, China produced 16 million electric cars in 2025, accounting for nearly three-quarters of global production. It also accounted for more than 80.0% of global battery cell manufacturing and production capacity, compared with approximately 6.0% to 7.0% of battery manufacturing capacity each in the European Union and the United States.

The expansion of China’s heavy industry and infrastructure further illustrates the extraordinary scale of this transformation. In 2025, China produced approximately 961 million tonnes of crude steel, compared with 82 million tonnes in the United States and 34 million tonnes in Germany. China alone produced more than half the world's steel, despite output having declined from its previous peak.

See the data on the chart below, which tracks Chinese crude steel production as a share of the global total.

Or take the example of solar and green energy. In solar manufacturing, the International Energy Agency has estimated that China accounts for more than 80.0% of global module manufacturing capacity and approximately 95.0% of solar wafer capacity.

For South Africa, with its fading industrial base, low levels of economic efficiency, and very high unemployment rate, increased exposure to Chinese industrial investment offers an opportunity to leapfrog its economy into a much more competitive future. With the exception of the current American administration, that opportunity is very much greater than anything it might draw from the broader West, given Western corporate culture’s obsequious adherence to climate and equity dogmas that will simply continue to sabotage South Africa’s industrial prospects. That adherence is the basis of this newspaper’s repeated argument that contemporary Western cultural influence has contributed to sabotaging South Africa’s economic prospects.

The importance of that industrial leapfrogging is best understood when read against The Common Sense’s analysis of the importance of industry, and especially manufacturing industry, as a bridge between rural poverty and middle-class suburbia.

That analysis showed how manufacturing is the only viable bridge between rural poverty and middle-class suburban life because it creates a pathway into the modern economy for millions of people who have little education, few skills, and almost no capital. Unlike sophisticated service industries, which often require substantial qualifications, manufacturing can absorb large numbers of relatively unskilled workers, equip them with practical skills, and steadily increase their productivity and earnings. Crucially, unlike domestic work and many forms of informal employment, manufacturing concentrates large numbers of people in a common workplace, where new entrants to the modern economy are exposed daily to the skills, experience, habits, and ambitions of more established workers. Younger workers learn from older colleagues not only how to operate machinery or improve their technical abilities, but also how to manage their money, navigate financial institutions, purchase property, educate their children, and build stable family lives.

But in South Africa’s case, as the chart below all too sadly reveals, the manufacturing economy has been in freefall for nearly three decades and is being supplanted by a tech and financial industry economy that cannot serve as the critical bridge.

Successful countries are those that are able to produce ruthless readings of where their strategic objectives lie, regardless of past alliances or political and ideological sensitivities. That is a reading that few of South Africa’s elites are prepared to undertake because many of the conclusions rattle comfortable establishment positions and challenge vested interests and ideological familiarities. It would be to South Africa’s national advantage to break through some of that.