Chery Buys Nissan’s 60-Year-Old Rosslyn Plant, Cementing First Chinese Manufacturing Foothold in South Africa

Foreign automakers abandoning aging assets to rising industrial powers is not new: in 1979–82 Chrysler sold its Linwood, Scotland plant to Peugeot-Talbot amid its own crisis, only for Peugeot to shut it three years later. Likewise, Japanese firms once used U.S. “transplant” factories in the 1980s to confront trade headwinds; four decades on, Japanese manufacturers now cede space to Chinese rivals who confront over-capacity at home and hunt growth abroad. South Africa’s low car-ownership rate and pending 150 % tax rebate for local new-energy-vehicle investment make it a beach-head for China’s export-led automakers, much as colonial railheads opened commodity corridors a century ago. Whether this moment proves a permanent shift or a footnote will hinge on Africa’s industrial policy and the durability of China’s cost advantage over the next half-century—but it unmistakably signals the first large-scale Chinese production footprint on the continent, foreshadowing a possible realignment of global auto supply chains over the next 100 years.