Silk FAW, a billion dollars at stake between China and the United States

Reggio Emilia Xinhua, the oldest official news agency in the People’s Republic of China, reported a year and a half ago about the partnership between Silk EV and FAO to build electric vehicles. It was April 20, 2020. Xinhua wrote: “Hongqi, a brand of Chinese automaker Faw Group, announced that it would form a joint venture with Silk Ev Llc to produce its first super sports model. Through a video conference on Thursday, the municipal government signed Northeast China Changchun City,FAO Silk EV LLC Letter of Cooperation with the intent of the Hongqi Chain Project”(Read the full article here).

And again: “Silk Ev Llc will invest 10 billion yuan (about 1.42 billion US dollars) over the next five years to build Hongqi S series products, with the aim of making it a famous brand of luxury sports cars. The company, headquartered in New York, has a research center The development and production are wholly owned in Modena, Italy.”

For a year and a half already, therefore, Silk Ev had a research, development and production center in Modena, at least according to the state-controlled New China Agency, also known as Xinhua. Council of the People’s Republic of China. A year and a half ago, there was talk of this investment which, however, had to happen again, according to this official Chinese government press source, in China.

On May 15, 2020, in North America, an American online economic information newspaper that has a partnership with Xinhua Silk Road, a web platform dedicated to the new Silk Road, with all information related to the project and its development, as well as services to meet the needs of American and Chinese companies, said that “the American company Silk Ev Llc established a joint innovation center in China and Italy on Wednesday to develop a super sports model for the popular Chinese sedan brand Hongqi. The American company plans to invest 25 million US dollars in the innovation center located in Changchun, northeast China”(Read the full article here).

So the investment, a year and a half ago, had to be made in China and had to be funded with $1.4 billion by Silk Ev. It happens to be the same amount that should be invested in the electric car tycoon in Gavasa, but in this case it should be guaranteed by Chinese capital. So in a year and a half, at least, according to Xinhua, the investment should be made first in Changchun with American capital, and then, after a year and a half, in Italy, in Java, with Chinese capital. According to the version provided by Silk Faw to Italian media.

Also the news can be found online, this time on Class, the MF-Milano Finanza publishing house that also has an agreement with the China Economic Information Service (CEIS) of Xinhua, the main Chinese multimedia group. State-controlled, to launch the Italian version of the Xinhua Silk Road platform. The Milano Finanza online newspaper has an article already published on the online version of Mf, which is highly critical of the Silk Faw project and in which potential problems regarding the financing behind the Silk Faw supercar project were highlighted (Read the article here).

It’s confusing news. It is really strange to think that on a site that publishes news in partnership with one of the largest Chinese news agencies, which is controlled by the government, regarding Chinese investments in Europe and Italy via the Silk Road, very important news towards Chinese investment. In Italy.