“The reason you’ll see China within the next couple of years come out with some stunners is due to their current regulation of the car industry which in order to sell cars in China you have to be in a joint venture with the Government”

According to the latest foreign investment catalogue I have, “[m]anufacture of complete automobiles (including R&D activities)” is an encouraged activity. Based on this there does not appear to be any requirement (at least on paper) for a joint venture with any Chinese party, let alone with the government, for a foreign-invested car manufacturing plant. In general it’s very unusual for a joint venture partner to have to be a state-owned enterprise (although I have seen this requirement for example in some specific areas of media distribution and telecoms).

Selling cars isn’t on the restricted list either, although leasing them is (so for a dealership doing leasing, they would need to be in a joint venture with a Chinese partner, which they pretty much all are anyway). This explains why you can find even relatively obscure brands here (Spyker, for instance( if you look hard enough (and if you’re willing to pay the aforementioned 3x markup and extortionate additional duties, fees for license plates, and the list goes on).

The reason GM and VW have big Chinese joint ventures is almost certainly because at the time they entered the market, foreign investors had to be in a JV. That’s no longer the case in this industry, though.

The antitrust law in China only came into effect quite recently, so I’d suggest reading up on it and the facts of this case before jumping to any conclusions. This wouldn’t be the first time Hyundai has done something like this, though.