On CATL’s Spain Project, A Few Modest Additions to the FT’s Reporting
Supplementary context on workforce composition in Germany and African precedents of Chinese investments.
The Financial Times on September 27 offered a report on CATL’s planned battery plant in Spain. The headline, China sends 2,000 workers to build battery power in Europe, highlighted the key concern voiced by relevant stakeholders through the FT.
The Global Times shot back the next day. The September 28 commentary, though noting the Financial Times story’s tone of suspicion, reads more like a reflexive counterpunch than a reasoned engagement. It frames European “anxiety” as an emotional problem rather than as the outcome of real structural dilemmas — from Europe’s hollowed-out manufacturing base and slow regulatory coordination to its uncertainty over how to balance economic openness with security concerns. By turning a complex industrial issue into a moral contrast between “open-minded China” and “narrow-minded Europe,” the rebuttal sidesteps the harder questions of how CATL’s European ventures could genuinely deepen trust — for example, through transparent supply-chain integration, skill development, or joint R&D.
The piece, curiously but perhaps rightly filed under the Opinion section, repeats familiar slogans about “mutual benefit” and “green transition” without showing how many local jobs have been created, what percentage of components will be sourced in Europe, or how the ventures contribute to skill formation.
This style of response has become increasingly familiar in Chinese media when addressing Western coverage and opinion leaders: too much indignation, too little substance. Arguments that should be grounded in data or research are often reduced to slogans and appeals to emotion. The Global Times, to its credit, retains a rare capacity in China these days for speed: it reacts quickly when a China-related story breaks.
Yet rapid response is not the same as persuasive - or if that’s too much of a luxury these days, reasonable - analysis. A more effective approach would pair that agility with real depth — facts, figures, and self-confidence that can withstand scrutiny rather than simply outshout criticism.
So here are a few points that may help enrich the broader context.
The FT’s description of 2,000 Chinese workers arriving to construct and install a European battery facility inevitably recalls recent episodes where similar concerns were raised.
Not long ago, ICE infamously raided the construction site of a Hyundai–LG battery plant in the United States. At that time, many of those on-site were not direct employees of the Korean multinational battery makers, but rather contractors and suppliers. This is, in fact, what common sense would suggest: the heavy lifting of constructing factory buildings, laying out technical infrastructure, and installing complex production lines is typically undertaken by specialist firms.
By raising this parallel, I am of course not implying that the Spanish government would contemplate actions resembling ICE raids in the United States, nor that the FT is encouraging such measures. The point is only that comparisons can be misleading if one does not distinguish between temporary contractors during construction and the longer-term employment structure once a plant begins operating.
Looking across Europe, CATL’s existing plant in Germany may offer a highly relevant benchmark, unfortunately absent from the FT article. Production there began around three years ago, and Germany, as a fellow EU member state, arguably provides the most pertinent point of reference.
Reporting by Semafor, the rising U.S. media outlet, in late 2024, based on interviews with CATL’s first employee in Germany (now leading the site’s learning and development), described
It’s hiring aggressively as production ramps up: The factory’s workforce has grown to roughly 2,200, some 500 of whom are Chinese, a number that will be whittled down to about 100 in a “localization” push starting this year.
More recently, in September 2025, Automobilwoche - the leading industry and business publication for the German automotive industry - cited Matt Shen, a top executive for CATL in Europe, as saying
At first, around 30 percent of employees came from China, but now it’s less than 10 percent.
This progression illustrates a clear pattern: initial reliance on experienced staff from headquarters to establish operations, followed by a steady handover to local employees as recruitment and training advance.
The FT also includes a broad observation from one commentator
While South Korean battery makers such as LG and Samsung tend to purchase inputs from local suppliers in Europe, Chinese companies by custom import from home.
The concern is understandable, though the reality may be more complex. CATL in Germany and Hungary appears to be part of a broader process of capacity-building.
The company advertises its evolution from exporting batteries “to Europe” to building “in Europe, for Europe”:
With over €11 billion investment in European operations, CATL has created thousands of jobs and fostered local talent through partnerships with universities and vocational institutions. Collaborating with over 200 carmakers worldwide, including long-standing European partners and over 1,000 European suppliers…
In Germany, CATL runs apprenticeship programs in production, maintenance, and logistics; in Hungary, it has signed formal partnerships with the University of Debrecen and the Debrecen Vocational Training Center to launch dual-education schemes and co-develop technician training.
Another point I would like to make is that the type of technology the FT piece seems to define is propositional or scientific knowledge, or equipment that can be easily handed out and received.
But Dan Wang, of Breakneck fame, has now coined and popularized a new term process knowledge, referring to the kind of tacit, experiential know-how that arises only through doing — through the cumulative, iterative learning that takes place on factory floors, in supply chains, and among engineers and technicians who are repeatedly solving small, real-world production problems. It’s the knowledge embedded not in blueprints or patents, but in processes: how to scale a prototype without defects, how to tweak a production line when materials vary slightly, how to maintain yield and reliability day after day.
His argument is that modern manufacturing powerhouses like China have accumulated vast reserves of process knowledge precisely because they have so many firms, factories, and workers engaged in making things at scale. You can’t “download” or “transfer” this knowledge easily — it’s embodied in routines, habits, local supplier ecosystems, and even in relationships between engineers and line workers.
Following on this logic, the thousands of European workers that CATL - and hopefully other Chinese companies as well - are not less important than some secret recipes for batteries.
Interestingly, turning the tables on accusations that were only levied against Beijing in 2018-19, there are now growing calls in Brussels to force technology transfer - from China.
Bruegel calls for “applying screening consistently and making approvals conditional on meaningful local partnerships” and “Licensing can also be used to create structured technology-transfer agreements.”
European Federation for Transport and Environment, a European umbrella for NGOs working in the field of transport and the environment, now demands “European Commission uses all its legal tools in the areas of state aid, trade, procurement and foreign investment to require intellectual property transfer.”
When I was in Brussels in early September, a local think tank expert summarized two reasons for lack of action so far:
First, a matter of principle and sentiment — Europe has long seen itself as technologically more advanced than China, and adopting policies once associated with a developing country that it accuses of not playing by the rules feels symbolically uncomfortable, even faintly humiliating.
Second, there is uncertainty over China’s potential reaction; European policymakers are unsure whether Beijing would respond sharply to such conditions, adding a layer of hesitation.
But my bigger point is the following one, and largely unrelated to CATL.
Africa as a point of comparison
The FT piece also referred to Chinese companies’ experience in Africa, where the use of Chinese labor has long been a subject of debate and, unfortunately, manipulation. To its credit, the FT report was measured in tone, even if the phrasing at times hinted at some of the widespread misconceptions that continue to circulate.
In February 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo famously claimed that Chinese companies in Africa don’t create local jobs.
They don’t hire the local people.
This sweeping statement stands in contrast to a wealth of empirical research.
In 2015, a Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS) review of over 400 Chinese enterprises and projects in Africa found
over 85% of their workforces consist of local African workers.
Based on interviews with 11 Chinese firms in Kenya, two researchers at the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies documented that the proportion of Kenyan employees is 78%, only slightly lower than the proportion among U.S. firms in the same region (82%).
In 2017, McKinsey reported after face-to-face interviews and surveys of 1,073 Chinese firms across eight countries in Africa
At the more than 1,000 companies we spoke to, 89 percent of employees were African, resulting in more than 300,000 jobs for African workers. Scaled up across all 10,000 Chinese firms in Africa, these numbers suggest that Chinese-owned business already employ several million Africans.
In 2019, a synthesis report produced by the Industrial Development, Construction and Employment in Africa (IDCEA) at SOAS University of London says
As part of the desk review we collected all available evidence on rates of workforce localization in Chinese firms operating in African countries. We compiled nearly 60 databases, studies and cases across the wide spectrum of projects from very low to very high levels of localization covering a period of more than ten years, and arrived at a weighted average of 85% (see Appendix A for an illustrative selection of these sources). About two-thirds of these cases and studies estimated localization rates exceeding 80%.
The IDCEA’s standing main findings include
The proportion of national (Ethiopian and Angolan) workers in the labour force is substantially higher than assumed in media perceptions. Our survey suggests that workforce localization rates are much higher than assumed. In Ethiopia about 90% of workers in Chinese firms were, in fact, Ethiopians. In Angola, where localization is more severely constrained by binding skill shortages, our estimated rates were close to 75%. We also found that localization had grown significantly in the previous 10 years as Chinese firms settled in the Angolan market, a trend that is shared by most other African countries, and that Chinese firms contributed to a large proportion of new jobs especially in construction.
Wages in Chinese firms broadly similar to other top firms in the same sectors. One factor that contributes to wage variation is that in both countries there is significant labour force segmentation, especially in Angola, where Chinese firms tend to operate a ‘migrant dormitory regime, which includes food and accommodation in addition to cash wages, thereby attracting many young workers from the poorest provinces of the country. Our statistical analysis suggests that other key determinants of wages are the skill level of workers, job tenure in company (+); education (+); work experience (+); socio-economic status (+) and location effects, Once we take all these factors into account the origin of a firm does not impact on wages on average. In other words, wages in sampled Chinese firms were broadly similar to other top firms in the same sectors, once other worker and company characteristics are taken into account.
Chinese firms contribute to training and skill development at least as much as other firms in the same sector, especially in the export-oriented manufacturing sector where organizational demands and skill requirements are more significant. Most of the training takes the form of on-site on the job practical training across a range of technical and ‘soft’ skills.
Yao Yang calls for homegrown confidence and openness as Chinese companies go global
Yao Yang has been a professor and dean of Dishui Lake Advanced Finance Institute at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE) since May 2025.
I'm not sure that 'process knowledge' is a Wangism. When I practiced IP law in California we used 'process knowledge' to describe implicit, bodily know-how.
What was it like when Tesla built its first Gigafactory near Shanghai? How many Americans were sent to that factory? What is the knowledge transfer like today? Did this transfer help make China the world's number one battery manufacturer?