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I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, deve

I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, developing everything in-house. The only thing the parent holding intermingles with us is numbers at the end of the year and strategic directions. So this could be happening here as well: Chinese say “hey let’s do electric” and the rest happens in Sweden. Would it then be really a Chinese vehicle?

aspenmayer 1y ago
> I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, developing everything in-house. The only thing the parent holding intermingles with us is numbers at the end of the year and strategic directions. > So this could be happening here as well: Chinese say “hey let’s do electric” and the rest happens in Sweden. Would it then be really a Chinese vehicle? Yes, that's the nature of corporate headquarters. If the company doesn't want to be thought of as a Chinese company, it could relocate its corporate headquarters elsewhere. This says nothing of the ownership structure and so on. A company could be just as Chinese due to ownership and/or control independently of where its corporate HQ is located. I don't think that this framing is especially useful, because there is no such thing as a stereotypical company or person. Individuals make up companies. Companies are just people, acting in concert. To say a company is Chinese makes me wonder why that is important to the person saying it, and makes me wonder why that is the way they choose to phrase it, and makes me wish they would tell me more about actual individual people that exist and what their views and goals are. Corporations aren't people. People are corporations.

aspenmayer 1y ago

> I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, developing everything in-house. The only thing the parent holding intermingles with us is numbers at the end of the year and strategic directions. > So this could be happening here as well: Chinese say “hey let’s do electric” and the rest happens in Sweden. Would it then be really a Chinese vehicle? Yes, that's the nature of corporate headquarters. If the company doesn't want to be thought of as a Chinese company, it could relocate its corporate headquarters elsewhere. This says nothing of the ownership structure and so on. A company could be just as Chinese due to ownership and/or control independently of where its corporate HQ is located. I don't think that this framing is especially useful, because there is no such thing as a stereotypical company or person. Individuals make up companies. Companies are just people, acting in concert. To say a company is Chinese makes me wonder why that is important to the person saying it, and makes me wonder why that is the way they choose to phrase it, and makes me wish they would tell me more about actual individual people that exist and what their views and goals are. Corporations aren't people. People are corporations.