On my recent trip to China last month, I had a five hour layover in Tokyo on my way back to Detroit. Searching for something to read at the Northwest World Club, I saw two headlines that grabbed my attention. The Wall Street Journal read “Chrysler Makes Bankruptcy Filing” and on Time Magazine it was “Shanghai, the Next Detroit.”

 

In my years of doing business in Shanghai, I have witnessed both the enormous growth and influence of this coastal city. Nonetheless, it is still farfetched to claim Shanghai the “Next Detroit,” just as it is wrong to declare Shenzhen (in Canton province) the “Next Silicon Valley.” During my visit to the biennial Shanghai International Auto Show, I saw a number of things that might have caused this incorrect connotation to persist, including:

 

The show’s size. There are so many automotive OEMs in China now, more than 120 of them. Naturally, there are a lot of cars to see. There are more than six large halls that host domestic and foreign made cars. ...

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