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On May 7, 2026, Chery Automobile announced an executive reshuffle tied to its "Globalization 3.0" strategy, with overseas revenue now approaching 70% of the group total. Executive Vice President Zhang Guibin will oversee both the Chery brand's domestic business group and its international business group, while Executive Vice President Li Xueyong takes charge of the JETOUR brand and its push upmarket.
The practical question beneath the headlines is less about individual titles and more about management architecture. Chery has long run domestic and overseas businesses as two separate tracks. Home-market models were planned independently from export versions, and different teams handled brand operations at home and market development abroad. That split made sense when overseas volume was small. But when overseas revenue pushes toward 70%, the coordination costs of two parallel systems become impossible to ignore.
Chery's latest financial disclosure showed overseas revenue of 98.97 billion yuan, up 51% year over year, representing 69.07% of group revenue. Group gross margin widened from 13.0% to 16.1% in the same period, a gain largely attributed to higher-margin sales outside China. Those numbers put the reorganization in context: Chery is no longer primarily a Chinese automaker with an export bonus. It is a global automaker whose home market happens to be China.
That distinction matters because of what the old structure forced the company to do. A product defined for the domestic market often had to be retrofitted by overseas teams to meet local rules and tastes. As product cycles accelerate, that kind of secondary development adds months to launch timelines. Duplicated R&D pipelines, fragmented supply chains and inconsistent brand positioning were the predictable results. The new structure attacks those problems at the management layer.
Under the new setup, Zhang Guibin becomes the single management interface linking domestic operating decisions with the capabilities needed overseas: compliance, R&D, supply-chain coordination and legal affairs across design, HR and legal functions. The intent is to end the old handoff problem, in which an international team had to negotiate separately with domestic product planners and functional departments. Now, local-market requirements can be pushed upstream before a model is finalized, not after.
There is also a less obvious governance benefit. By aligning design, HR and legal globally, Chery can apply lessons from one region to another quickly. A regulatory precedent in Europe, for example, can inform decision-making in Southeast Asia through the same management line rather than being handled by separate fiefdoms.
Li Xueyong's move to take direct control of JETOUR follows a different logic. Li built JETOUR around the "Travel+" positioning and turned it into a market dark horse. With off-road and outdoor vehicles gaining global demand, spinning JETOUR out from the core Chery brand gives it room to develop a distinct competitive edge. JETOUR no longer needs to be protected inside a mainstream brand portfolio; it can aim for premium territory with its own resources and identity.
The management reshuffle is arriving alongside a deeper change on the ground. Chery is moving beyond knocked-down kit assembly toward full-value-chain localization in manufacturing, R&D and regional operations.
In Europe, Chery's latest eight-month tally reached 234,000 sales across 24 countries, up 193%, with new-energy models exceeding 114,000 units — more than triple the year-earlier level. In September, the brand topped UK monthly sales with 32,823 registrations. In April, Chery opened a European operations center in Barcelona and established a research institute in Spain, giving the region local authority over operations, compliance and supply-chain decisions.
The timing is sensitive. Brussels' trade discussions on Chinese electric vehicles are still in flux, and Chery's localization push is widely seen as a hedge against tariff shocks as much as a growth strategy.
Manufacturing localization is equally concrete. The Rosslyn plant in South Africa, acquired in July 2026, will begin production in mid-2027 with a planned single-shift capacity of 50,000 units. Chery has committed to keeping all 692 existing employees and to creating nearly 3,000 additional supply-chain jobs, with a target of 40% local content by 2028. In Thailand, a new-energy vehicle plant in Rayong started production in April 2026. Earlier that year, Chery's Malaysian plant began exporting JETOUR SUVs to Vietnam, with the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei and Singapore next on the list.
Chery's global R&D network is now structured around a "1+7+N" framework spanning eight major R&D centers and more than 30,000 researchers. The UK passenger-vehicle center in Bedfordshire, opening in late fall 2026, will focus on chassis and driver-assist systems tuned for British road conditions. The principle — develop locally, for locals — marks a shift from exporting Chinese engineering standards to letting regional demand drive product adaptation.
Chery first presented Globalization 3.0 at the Shanghai auto show in April 2025. Chairman Yin Tongyao described three phases: export products, build factories, then integrate R&D, manufacturing, supply chain and services into a single global system anchored by innovation. His early slogan, "In China, For Global," was later sharpened to "In somewhere, For somewhere, Be somewhere" at the company's Global Innovation Conference. The updated phrasing signals that Chery's endgame is deep local integration, not simply selling vehicles across borders.
The company's actions confirm the shift. In 2024, it revived Spain's dormant EBRO brand. In 2026, its South African plans include passenger vehicles, green photovoltaic systems, robotics and a circular-economy program. Those are not typical export activities.
The organizational change reflects a wider challenge for Chinese automakers. Export volumes have grown, but price advantage and product output alone now hit ceilings imposed by regulation, brand recognition and supply-chain localization. The old "trading mindset" is giving way to an "operating mindset." Chery's response is to collapse the domestic-international divide into one management line and let regional operations make more decisions locally.
What remains to be seen is execution: whether the unified structure genuinely shortens product-development cycles, whether JETOUR finds premium traction outside China, and whether localized plants reach promised cost and content targets. Industry analysts say the critical test will be whether Zhang can shorten the time between identifying a foreign market requirement and changing a product specification. Insiders say more Globalization 3.0 details will be released "down the line." In the meantime, Chery has made one thing clear: the company that started as an export player is now trying to manage itself like a global automaker.
