THE 2026 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition—Auto China 2026—has once again spotlighted the extraordinary strides China has made in the automotive sector.

With a record-breaking exhibition area of 380,000 square meters, the show’s theme, “Future of Intelligence”, was not merely a slogan but a lived reality, showcasing intelligent connected vehicles, artificial intelligence integration and electric mobility at a scale unmatched globally. China’s automotive journey began modestly in the 1950s and 1960s, when rudimentary truck and bus designs dominated production. For decades, the industry lagged behind established giants in the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France—partly owing to Western technological embargoes.

President Ayub Khan, whose son Gohar Ayub Khan later became Pakistan’s Foreign Minister and Speaker of the National Assembly, once shared a telling anecdote with me during my television program Defence and Diplomacy. As head of Gandhara Motors in Pakistan, he toured a truck manufacturing facility in China in the early 1960s. His observation was candid: Pakistan was then far ahead of China in automotive manufacturing. At that time, Gandhara Motors was assembling Bedford trucks under license, while China’s factories were still struggling with rudimentary designs. This historical comparison underscores the astonishing transformation China has undergone. From being a laggard in the 1960s and 1970s, China has now become the world’s largest automobile producer and consumer, with exports surging across Asia, Africa, Europe........

© Pakistan Observer