-- As China’s auto show floor buzzes with AI promises and aggressive discounting, one of the country’s largest automakers is taking a conspicuously unfashionable stance: competing on trust, not hype.
At the Auto China 2026, executives from GWM used a dealer conference and media interviews to publicly reject industry trends – including price wars, brand proliferation, and over-the-top claims about intelligence – arguing that integrity and reliability will ultimately determine who wins globally.
“We will never engage in price wars at the expense of product safety and long-term quality,” said Jack Wey, GWM’s chairman, in a keynote address to overseas distributors. “Integrity is the rarest currency in business. Once it is lost, it cannot be bought back.”
The Chinese auto market is enduring a brutal price battle. Nearly every electric vehicle brand has been forced into steep discounts. But GWM’s international president, Parker Shi, called that dynamic “a race to the bottom.”
“Frequent price cuts erode residual value,” Shi said in a media interview at the show. “Customers who bought at full price feel betrayed. After one year, a new model arrives and the old one is worth half. That is not a healthy business model.”
Shi also pushed back against the industry’s obsession with software-defined features. “Ten years ago, cars had no intelligent features, and people drove just fine,” he said. “Intelligence is a plus. Safety is the zero before the one.”
GWM is in the midst of a major global push, flying in 1,500 overseas dealers and media to Beijing. It unveiled new off-road hybrids, a luxury six-seat SUV, and even a large-displacement motorcycle. But executives repeatedly stressed that brand trust cannot be harvested like wheat.
“You would never buy a Rolex from a convenience store,” Shi said, expressing caution toward competitors that launch multiple brands for short-term share gains, only to disappear when the market turns.Chairman Wey articulated a three-layer integrity strategy: toward users, partners and the global market. He noted that for 21 years, GWM has held weekly vehicle evaluation meetings – more than 1,000 to date – open to users and media. “We would rather lose a business opportunity than compromise our credibility,” he said.
On global expansion, Wey and Shi both warned against treating exports as a shipping exercise. “Localisation is not a checkbox,” Shi said. “It is survival.”
GWM’s message is quietly contrarian. “The next era of global auto competition will not belong to the loudest,” Shi said. “It will belong to the most trustworthy.”
Contact Info:
Name: Carol Wang
Email: Send Email
Organization: GWM
Website: https://www.gwm-global.com/global/
Release ID: 89190689
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