Volkswagen, the first foreign automaker to enter the Chinese market and a sponsor of the 2008 Beijing games, urged China's government on Thursday, April 24th, to "embrace the spirit of the Olympic Games". (Photo --- VW's Lavida sedan is the first "China-only" car made by Shanghai Volkswagen, and was debuted at the recent 2008 Beijing Auto Show).
Everyone around the world knows what a fantastic "success" the Beijing Olympic Torch Armored Stampede, uh, Run, has been, at least in those countries where a brutal, militaristic central government can offer the Torch Run the kind of, uh, "encouragement" desired by their like-minded buddies in Beijing. (Photos --- It was protesters versus police in San Francisco; a torch-bearer enjoys his moment in the San Francisco sun).
Places like San Francisco, a city which prides itself on offering "the run of the town" to just 
about anyone, provided the proper permits are paid and security arrangements made. Didn't anyone wonder why San Francisco was the Torch's only US stop? While we understand San Francisco's desire and need to host their Red Chinese guests in a safe and sane manner, the city nonetheless made itself look ridiculous by playing "Hide the Torch" for several hours, toying with the city's own citizens while "kissing up" to Beijing and their crack security teams guarding the Torch.
Surprisingly, but also happily, Volkswagen has become the first Beijing Games' sponsor to stand-up publicly to China's contributions to murderous, violent, cruel repression and political manipulations not only aimed at their own people, but also in Tibet, Nepal, Darfur and other nations. They did it in a way which, while it might seem timid and weak to the average American, nonetheless attempts to "gets the message across" to their Chinese business partners in an Asian, "face-saving" way. (Photo --- The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet has long been a flash-point between the nation which he was forced to escape, in disguise, in 1959, as China began to complete their dominance over the country, Tibet, which had been traditionally led politically and religiously by the Dalai Lama for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years).
Volkswagen is no innocent company. Born in the earliest days of what became WWII, Dr. Ferdinand 
Porsche sought-out and received a personal commission from Hitler to design and build the "People's Car", what was to eventually be called the Volkswagen. Porsche (the engineering firm Ferdinand founded and led) was involved as were other infamous firms of Nazi Germany, including Daimler-Benz and Bayer, in developing munitions, vehicles and many other war-related products. Today, Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi are all strongly inter-related (by both stock ownership and family) and all, including Daimler, have been involved in the payment of billions of dollars in war reparations to the war's victims and the State of Israel; these companies and many of their top executives and labor leaders, and the German government, have tried to make honest and appropriate amends following WWII, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so. (Photo --- Beijing traffic; the city now averages more than 10,000 new-car registrations per week, a number continuously on the rise).
So it is especially appropriate that the first Beijing Games' sponsor to openly criticize Beijing and try to
push the regime towards more openness should be one which had its own first-hand experience as a member of what was possibly the world's single-most deadly "government;" no one will ever be certain if China killed more people during their "Cultural Revolution" than were killed due to Germany's murderous aggression in WWII.
As reported by Reuters, "The Olympics offer China and its people a unique opportunity not only to continue their economic development, but above all to further open up their society," Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn told shareholders at the VW annual meeting.
"We hope and firmly believe that our Chinese partners will seize this unique opportunity."
The CEO said Volkswagen had stressed this in talks with those responsible in China.
The second-largest carmaker in China behind U.S. rival General Motors, Volkswagen decided in June 2004 to become a partner of the Beijing games and went so far as to dub the restructuring of its two Chinese joint ventures the "Olympic Programme."
The Games have turned into a public relations disaster for China after violent crackdowns in Tibet provoked protests in the West and forced runners bearing the Olympic torch around the world to be protected by security forces. (End of Reuters story).
This is the interior of the VW Lavida, "Made in China, Only for China." Around the world, VW interiors are used as styling and quality benchmarks for other car-makers
Click below to read more about Volkswagen criticizing China using "soft diplomacy" and possibly cutting the amount of supplies purchased from Chinese companies!
(Photos --- Top, VW's "Made in China, Only for China" Lavida family sedan; Below, 2009 Volkswagen Scirocco, to be sold in Europe and China). 
Interestingly, one week after the Reuters story ran around the world, Automotive News, the industry's weekly, ran the following in a longer piece: Volkswagen plans to cut one-third of its suppliers in China in five years, but the partsmakers it will retain will have a better chance to supply its joint ventures in China -- Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive and FAW-Volkswagen Automotive.
To cut costs, VW plans to buy 75 percent of the parts for the two joint ventures from the same suppliers, said Joachim Wedler, vice president of FAW-VW, at the Automotive News China Conference in Beijing on April 18.
Currently, VW only buys 20 percent of parts for the two ventures from the same suppliers. VW will further 
concentrate on key partners by reducing the number of its suppliers in China from 750 last year to less than 500 by 2012, said Wedler.
VW aims to sell more than 1 million cars in China in 2008. "We will launch two or three new models every year in 2009 and 2010," said Wedler. Combined sales of the two joint ventures in 2007 were 925,593 units, according to Automotive Resources Asia, a unit of J.D. Power and Associates.
On April 18, Shanghai Volkswagen took over Fiat's former plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, which has an annual capacity of 60,000 passenger vehicles. The Santana Vista sedan will be the first model to be built in Nanjing. Also, FAW-VW has started making the lower-medium Jetta in its Chengdu plant in Sichuan province with an initial capacity of 20,000. (Photo --- Smoggy day in Beijing).
VW will bring its latest and most advanced powertrain technology to China, said Wedler. VW will replace the engines of the Sagitar sedan and China's best-selling luxury car, the Audi A6L, in an effort to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent in China by 2010, he said.
Wedler said Volkswagen is eager to introduce its latest diesel technology to China, but the poor quality of diesel fuel and restrictions on diesel cars in major Chinese cities have made it difficult to do so. (End of Automotive News story)
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