This is the real answer. Many industries have a huge inertia from built-up skill in the labour force and industry R&D, and built capital. In all of these areas, China was far behind the West for cars. That was until EVs came along and completely eliminated the engine and exhaust management, which was by far the most complicated part of the car in terms of expertise. To make it even better, it all got replaced by electronics, which is something that China is great at and a lot of traditional car countries aren't great at. The combination meant that even though China didn't have a great industry around forming body panels to an effective precision, even though they didn't have the best engineers that understand suspension systems or ultra-reliable control systems, they could compete with the big car countries on something much closer to an equal footing. And when the Chinese get to compete on an equal footing in the modern era, they win more often than they don't.
