A new state regulation that goes into effect on May 1 states that all cars produced in China should put their brand name in Chinese characters on the car. Volkswagen has already been doing that in China, but Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz (who all produce some of their models locally now) don’t have this. It is a bit strange, if you consider that a Mercedes-Benz only puts the model name (C220, E280 etc.) on its cars, not the full name ‘Mercedes-Benz’. Now they will suddenly need to do this in China and on top of that in Chinese characters.
I predict that the car companies will obey the rule, but that the dealers will offer clients the service to take off the Chinese characters at delivery. Especially for high-end cars the customers might not like to show that they drive a locally-produced car, so most clients will likely use this service. A typical Chinese solution in which both the government and the customers are happy. Nobody looses face, and in the end nothing really changes.
you need to read more Chinese paper to understand the reason behind that rule. if you don’t read Chinese, you may ask your Chinese friend why the government needs that rule: those cars are not produced in the brand’s original country so they need extra information to tell the customers that they are made in China in case some seller will take advantage of the “foreign brand” on the price!
That’s nonsense, you can see in the papers from the car where it is produced, putting a Chinese tag on it is unnecessary. Prices are very transparent in China, they can be found everywhere as a comparison, so that is not an issue either. Reading Chinese papers has nothing to do with ‘understanding this rule’.