Last December, the electric vehicle company NIO hosted its annual celebration for customers in Shenzhen, one of China’s entrepreneurial hotbeds. The event, called “NIO Day,” mixes an Apple-style keynote address with the lighting and theatrics of a stadium concert. Among the evening’s highlights was a musical skit by the Blue Sky Chorus, a troupe of volunteer performers who are all NIO customers.
In original lyrics they composed, the group catalogued their heartaches through the company’s tumultuous journey — “old classmates snickered, the whole neighborhood gossiped” — then broke into a rap sequence where they fired back. The second verse described the joys of driving a NIO car and their commitment to the company’s success.
They sang: “The NIO life is worth loving with all your spirit. If I can choose again, I would still choose NIO.”
Sitting in the front row, watching intently, was William Li, the 45-year-old founder and chief executive of NIO. In comp
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.