South Africa’s choice about how it trades with China is, in the end, a choice about what ordinary South Africans can afford, where they work, and how quickly the country can build the factories its green future depends on. That is the argument at the heart of a response to remarks by Kristian Schmidt, the European Union Ambassador to South Africa, who urged Pretoria in an interview with Daily Maverick on 21 October to raise tariffs against Chinese goods.
The response, framed as a right of reply, takes a blunt view of the diplomat’s role. A diplomat’s task, it argues, is to bring his own country and his host country closer together, not to tell the host which other partners it may work with, and certainly not to urge it to wall off a third country. It suggests, gently but firmly, that the ambassador may have underestimated the wisdom of South Africans themselves.
At the centre of the dispute sits the question of so-called overcapacity in China’s new energy vehicle industry. The reply contends that the industry was built not on handouts but on two decades of research, fierce competition at home, and the world’s most complete manufacturing supply chain, with the market doing the driving. It also points out that most EU countries welcome Chinese electric vehicles, particularly as every country races to meet its climate commitments and affordable clean vehicles become indispensable to that effort.
What changed: the public-interest stakes have been laid out in stark numbers. The International Energy Agency expects about 23 million electric cars to be sold worldwide this year. Across all of Africa, only about 25,000 were sold in 2025, and roughly 60% of vehicles added to the continent’s roads each year are imported second hand. Africa, the argument runs, does not have too many affordable clean cars. It has far too few. For households watching fuel prices swing, the ability to buy a reliable car that is cheaper to run matters directly, whether in Soweto or Polokwane.
On the charge of dumping, the reply notes that exporting is not a sin. By the standard now applied to China, Denmark would top the world’s overcapacity list: its exports equal about 70% of its GDP, and its current-account surplus reached 12.3% of GDP last year, more than three times China’s 3.7%. Danish wind turbines, medicines and pork sell the world over, and within the EU that is called competitiveness. The same applies to cars. Until last year, the EU sold China more vehicles and parts than it bought in every year on record; as recently as 2022 it shipped more than €30-billion worth. Beijing never called that dumping, and the EU calls it trade.
Meanwhile, the jobs at stake are already on the ground. BAIC has made vehicles in Gqeberha since 2018 with the Industrial Development Corporation, adding the Foton Tunland bakkie last year. In July, Chery took over Nissan’s Rosslyn plant, retaining its 692 workers and aiming to support about 3,000 supplier jobs, while making South Africa its African manufacturing, export and R&D hub. More than 200 Chinese enterprises have invested and built operations in the country, creating more than 400,000 local jobs.
Barriers, the reply warns, rarely stop at China. Since January, South African steel and aluminium exporters have had to pay the EU’s carbon border levy, and since 1 July a new EU steel regime has slashed import quotas and doubled out-of-quota tariffs to 50%, putting South African producers at risk in their second-largest steel export market after China. A tariff on affordable Chinese EVs would, in effect, be a tax on the Global South’s green transition. China, by contrast, has since 1 May granted zero-tariff treatment on 100% of tariff lines to all 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic relations, asking nothing in return. South African apples were among the first goods to clear customs.
The reply endorses the ambassador’s own observation that a trade deficit does not mean being cheated; it means consumers on both sides benefit. South Africa, it concludes, is sovereign and need not choose between Europe and China. Competition that brings more choice, better products and more factories is not a threat but an opportunity to seize together. The question now is whether Pretoria will act on that conviction the next time a trading partner comes calling.