The

The Hello and behind the news. My name is Doug Henwood.

Normalcy may be under siege in the broader world,

but its hegemony persists here, two guests, two segments. Palo Gerbato will tell us about the rise of the

Chinese electric vehicle firm B.Y.D. And Andrew Hartman will review the history of Karl Marx's reception

in an influence on the U.S. Last week, I interviewed Kyle Chan on Chinese industrial policy in the country's economic

challenges to the U.S.

We talked some about B.D, the Chinese electric vehicle, EV manufacturer, which is leaving Tesla

in the dust.

I promised more this week, and here it is.

The economic sociologist Paulo Gerbato has been studying the company,

where it came from, where it's going,

and he's written up his research in a couple of articles in Phenomenal World,

one from April 2024 and the other from April 2025.

It's quite a story. Founded as a battery company in 2003,

it acquired a failing car maker a few years later,

and launched its first hybrid car in 2008.

They're now about 80 EV makers in China, where the government deliberately stokes over capacity

and a practice of engineered Darwinism designed to discover which firms are the most competitive.

At least for now, BYD.D. has taken the lead,

initially on the basis of domestic sales, but it is now expanding both sales and production globally.

Here's Paolo Gerbado with more. He's an economic sociologist at Complutenza University in Madrid,

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