TheChek News Flow

Chinese companies have amassed ownership stakes in about 10,000 auto suppliers in America

Chinese cars aren’t on American roads, but Chinese auto parts are embedded in American cars.

More than 60 auto suppliers in the U.S. today are owned by companies located in China, according to data compiled by the consulting firm AlixPartners. Those include large manufacturers of air bags, automotive glass, and steering systems. Overall, Chinese companies have amassed ownership stakes in about 10,000 suppliers in America, according to the data, including stakes as small as 5%.

“They’re deeply integrated into the industry,” said Michael Dunne, chief executive officer of the automotive-consulting firm Dunne Insights, which focuses on China.

While American lawmakers, politicians and carmakers have emphasized the economic and national-security risks of Chinese companies that enter the U.S. market, some of those concerns have already manifested themselves in China’s grip on the supply chain. Last year a political dispute tied to a Chinese-owned chip maker threatened to disrupt production for global automakers.

Lawmakers recently revived the idea of eliminating Chinese parts in U.S. cars in a Senate bill that would ban China-made cars and safety components, such as air bags and seat belts.

In late April, more than 50 House Republicans, led by Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.), wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. They urged the Trump administration to block Chinese automotive and battery companies from manufacturing in the U.S. Their letter warned that Chinese investment in the American auto-supply chain poses risk to domestic industries.

Some car companies have been taking steps to bring some component production home. Tesla started requiring its suppliers to exclude China-made components in the manufacturing of its cars in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported last year. General Motors CEO Mary Barra has said the automaker has reduced its direct spending on materials in China for U.S.-made cars to less than 3% as part of a strategy to buy parts where it is building vehicles.

The U.S. has been looking at China’s presence in the domestic auto-supply chain for years. An International Trade Commission study in 2019 found that Chinese production of automotive parts had grown significantly over the preceding decade, with U.S. imports concentrated in smaller components such as brake rotors.

Several automakers have endorsed the recently proposed legislation to prohibit Chinese cars. But at least 40 vehicle models on sale today were assembled with a reportable amount of Chinese components, according to data that car companies submit to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Ford Motor’s latest Mustang GT uses six-speed manual transmissions from China. About 15% of parts in Toyota Motor’s latest Prius plug-in hybrid come from China, according to the data. GM reported that Chevrolet’s Trax sport-utility vehicle, along with the all-electric Blazer and Equinox SUVs, contain roughly 20% of parts from China, the data showed.

Ford said it looks forward to working with lawmakers on the proposed Chinese-car ban. GM, which said it endorsed the Senate bill, declined to comment further. A Toyota spokesman declined to comment.

Across the world, Chinese ownership of some of the biggest suppliers in the industry has steadily increased. In 2012, one Chinese company ranked among the top 100 global suppliers, according to data from AlixPartners-owned Berylls, which bases rankings on automotive revenue. In 2024, that number had jumped to 13 suppliers, and it is expected to reach 22 by the end of the decade.

“This shows the incredible speed in which the competitive environment has changed,” said Juergen Simon, a partner at AlixPartners.

In the U.S., carmakers have become closely tied to the work of Chinese-owned suppliers. Fuyao, a glass supplier, supplies Detroit’s three and other domestic auto manufacturers. Another company, CATL, is the world’s largest electric-vehicle battery manufacturer. Nexteer, a publicly traded global manufacturer of steering systems and drivelines, is controlled by a Chinese conglomerate and makes parts for top carmakers in the U.S. and China.

“Fuyao Glass America is a U.S.-based enterprise committed to localized manufacturing operations and the creation of local employment opportunities,” the company said, adding that it has strong relationships with major U.S. automakers. “Our localized supply and service network enables us to respond efficiently and promptly to our customers’ production needs.”

While Chinese suppliers used to be avoided because of concern about quality and performance, that is no longer the case, Simon said.

Simon has been advising a large supplier on business strategy for five years. When he started, he said the Chinese were only viewed as potential upstarts to competition, but things have changed.

“Now, they tell me whenever they lose, it is against a Chinese supplier,” he said.

American Hondius Passengers to Head to Nebraska Quarantine Center

Global public-health officials race to contain the spread of hantavirus as over 100 passengers are set to return to home countries

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent staff to the Canary Islands to meet the cruise ship at the center of a hantavirus outbreak that global health authorities are racing to contain.

There, they are expected to help facilitate the next leg of the journey for 17 American passengers on board the vessel.

That destination: high-tech quarantine facilities in Omaha, Neb., that include a unit used in 2014 to monitor U.S. citizens with Ebola and again in 2020 for Americans returning from Wuhan, China, and from the Diamond Princess cruise ship stricken with Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic.

Public-health officials in states including Virginia, Texas and Georgia are now monitoring other Americans who got off the ship before authorities confirmed the outbreak. States like New Jersey are watching people who shared flights with cruise passengers who later were diagnosed with the virus.

As of Saturday, none of the passengers currently aboard the MV Hondius were showing signs of hantavirus, the rare infection carried by rodents that has so far killed three people and infected five others aboard the Hondius. But the contagion risk is still a mystery. There are confirmed cases among those who already left the boat and questions swirling over possible exposures on flights, pressuring U.S. health officials to escalate their strategy to halt its spread.

The Hondius is expected to dock early Sunday local time at Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands in Spain, according to the ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions. The State Department is organizing a repatriation flight to bring the Americans still on board the ship back to the U.S. Another CDC team will go to a Nebraska Air Force base to meet the flight on its return.

The American cruise ship passengers will be brought to the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s National Quarantine Unit, the center said. The 20-room facility is the only quarantine facility funded by the federal government in the U.S., and its rooms are equipped with personal bathrooms, exercise equipment, Wi-Fi and special ventilation systems, according to the center. It was funded by a nearly $20 million federal grant.

The facility looks more like a hotel than a hospital. People quarantining at the center are asked not to leave their rooms and receive, essentially, room service brought to their door, said Dr. Michael Wadman, medical director of the National Quarantine Unit at University of Nebraska Medicine.

“We’re familiar with this virus,” Wadman said, contrasting it to Covid, which was a novel virus when it first emerged. “But in this situation we want to err on the side of caution.”

Nurses and physicians trained in infection control instruct those staying in the units on protocols, including how to manage their laundry, Wadman said. Nurses wearing personal protective equipment will check their symptoms daily. The quarantine unit staff also ensure people staying there can speak to friends and family and have access to counseling services if needed.

Staff undergo quarterly training that allows them to activate the quarantine unit quickly and mitigate a variety of situations, Wadman said. That could include determining what to do if someone vomits in their room or facilitating care if a healthcare provider gets sick.

“We’re really training to the range of possibilities,” Wadman said.

If any cruise ship passengers are quarantined and develop symptoms, they will be moved to the nearby Nebraska Biocontainment Unit—a facility isolated from the rest of Nebraska’s medical center, designed to treat patients infected with highly hazardous infectious diseases, according to Nebraska Medicine.

A CDC official said Saturday that ship passengers will be monitored for around six weeks, or 42 days, but not necessarily only in Nebraska. The official said authorities will coordinate with some passengers and local jurisdictions for at-home monitoring, though it wasn’t clear how many people were going home or when.

Scientists confirmed that the rare Andes variant of hantavirus is the source of the outbreak on the ship. It is the only form of the disease carried by rodents that can be transmitted between humans. Normally people can only transmit it through very close contact, like sharing food or living quarters, according to experts.

The World Health Organization said two passengers who later died from hantavirus boarded the vessel after traveling through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip that included visits to areas where rats known to carry the Andes variant live.

Quarantines for returning travelers, depending on their level of exposure, could end up being lengthy as the incubation period for the virus is around six weeks. Argentina, which deals with this strain of hantavirus more than most countries, sets guidelines based on a person’s exposure. U.S. public health officials might take guidelines from Argentina into account when determining how to handle the ship’s passengers or any others who might have been exposed, said Dr. Gaby Frank, director for the Center for Special Pathogens at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

“The monitoring can be a little more intense or less intense,” she said. If a person was at high risk of exposure, she said, that person would likely be asked to have no contact with anyone else until the roughly six-week incubation period has passed.

That said, a person with a lower-risk exposure might only need to check in with public-health officials by phone once a day. In Texas, for example, the state’s health department said two residents who were aboard the ship are now checking their temperatures daily and agreed to contact public-health officials if they start to show any symptoms.

American Hondius Passengers to Head to Nebraska Quarantine Center

Global public-health officials race to contain the spread of hantavirus as over 100 passengers are set to return to home countries

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending staff to the Canary Islands to meet a cruise ship with a hantavirus outbreak.

The MV Hondius has a hantavirus outbreak that has killed three people and infected five others; the rare Andes variant is confirmed.

Seventeen American passengers from the ship will be quarantined at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s National Quarantine Unit.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent staff to the Canary Islands to meet the cruise ship at the center of a hantavirus outbreak that global health authorities are racing to contain.

There, they are expected to help facilitate the next leg of the journey for 17 American passengers on board the vessel.

That destination: high-tech quarantine facilities in Omaha, Neb., that include a unit used in 2014 to monitor U.S. citizens with Ebola and again in 2020 for Americans returning from Wuhan, China, and from the Diamond Princess cruise ship stricken with Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic.

Public-health officials in states including Virginia, Texas and Georgia are now monitoring other Americans who got off the ship before authorities confirmed the outbreak. States like New Jersey are watching people who shared flights with cruise passengers who later were diagnosed with the virus.

As of Saturday, none of the passengers currently aboard the MV Hondius were showing signs of hantavirus, the rare infection carried by rodents that has so far killed three people and infected five others aboard the Hondius. But the contagion risk is still a mystery. There are confirmed cases among those who already left the boat and questions swirling over possible exposures on flights, pressuring U.S. health officials to escalate their strategy to halt its spread.

The Hondius is expected to dock early Sunday local time at Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands in Spain, according to the ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions. The State Department is organizing a repatriation flight to bring the Americans still on board the ship back to the U.S. Another CDC team will go to a Nebraska Air Force base to meet the flight on its return.

The American cruise ship passengers will be brought to the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s National Quarantine Unit, the center said. The 20-room facility is the only quarantine facility funded by the federal government in the U.S., and its rooms are equipped with personal bathrooms, exercise equipment, Wi-Fi and special ventilation systems, according to the center. It was funded by a nearly $20 million federal grant.

The facility looks more like a hotel than a hospital. People quarantining at the center are asked not to leave their rooms and receive, essentially, room service brought to their door, said Dr. Michael Wadman, medical director of the National Quarantine Unit at University of Nebraska Medicine.

“We’re familiar with this virus,” Wadman said, contrasting it to Covid, which was a novel virus when it first emerged. “But in this situation we want to err on the side of caution.”

Nurses and physicians trained in infection control instruct those staying in the units on protocols, including how to manage their laundry, Wadman said. Nurses wearing personal protective equipment will check their symptoms daily. The quarantine unit staff also ensure people staying there can speak to friends and family and have access to counseling services if needed.

Staff undergo quarterly training that allows them to activate the quarantine unit quickly and mitigate a variety of situations, Wadman said. That could include determining what to do if someone vomits in their room or facilitating care if a healthcare provider gets sick.

“We’re really training to the range of possibilities,” Wadman said.

If any cruise ship passengers are quarantined and develop symptoms, they will be moved to the nearby Nebraska Biocontainment Unit—a facility isolated from the rest of Nebraska’s medical center, designed to treat patients infected with highly hazardous infectious diseases, according to Nebraska Medicine.

A CDC official said Saturday that ship passengers will be monitored for around six weeks, or 42 days, but not necessarily only in Nebraska. The official said authorities will coordinate with some passengers and local jurisdictions for at-home monitoring, though it wasn’t clear how many people were going home or when.

Scientists confirmed that the rare Andes variant of hantavirus is the source of the outbreak on the ship. It is the only form of the disease carried by rodents that can be transmitted between humans. Normally people can only transmit it through very close contact, like sharing food or living quarters, according to experts.

The World Health Organization said two passengers who later died from hantavirus boarded the vessel after traveling through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip that included visits to areas where rats known to carry the Andes variant live.

Quarantines for returning travelers, depending on their level of exposure, could end up being lengthy as the incubation period for the virus is around six weeks. Argentina, which deals with this strain of hantavirus more than most countries, sets guidelines based on a person’s exposure. U.S. public health officials might take guidelines from Argentina into account when determining how to handle the ship’s passengers or any others who might have been exposed, said Dr. Gaby Frank, director for the Center for Special Pathogens at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

“The monitoring can be a little more intense or less intense,” she said. If a person was at high risk of exposure, she said, that person would likely be asked to have no contact with anyone else until the roughly six-week incubation period has passed.

That said, a person with a lower-risk exposure might only need to check in with public-health officials by phone once a day. In Texas, for example, the state’s health department said two residents who were aboard the ship are now checking their temperatures daily and agreed to contact public-health officials if they start to show any symptoms.

Passengers with symptoms could be sent to isolation on the island, health officials warn

The cruise ship hit by the rat-borne hantavirus is due to arrive early on Sunday in the Canary Islands, where infectious disease doctors and emergency aircraft are massing to evacuate almost 150 people on board.

The Spanish government said the MV Hondius would arrive between 4am and 6am local time as multiple national governments prepare repatriation flights and quarantine procedures for their citizens, while racing to track others who left the ship at stops in the Atlantic.

The evacuation in Tenerife marks the most critical step yet in the brewing hantavirus crisis, which has killed three people. It has drawn comparisons with the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, but health officials stress the risk to the general public from illness is low because the virus requires close contact to spread.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, was travelling to Tenerife on Saturday to help oversee the arrival of 147 people, which is being led by the Spanish government.

Mónica García, Spain’s health minister, said: “This is an unprecedented operation on an international scale.”

The hantavirus outbreak now comprises six confirmed cases and two probable cases, including the three cruise passengers who have died.

The response has been complicated by the disease’s incubation time of up to eight weeks and a cruise itinerary that involved multiple stops on remote Atlantic islands with limited medical facilities.

After infectious disease specialists have boarded the ship in Tenerife to assess the 87 passengers and 60 crew, most will disembark in small groups by nationality, starting with 14 Spaniards.

Provided they are symptom-free, the Spaniards will be flown on a military jet to Madrid where they will go into hospital quarantine for several weeks.

here are more than 20 British citizens on the Hondius. They will be met by UK officials in Tenerife and escorted to a flight home. UK health authorities said on Saturday that they would be taken to a hospital in north-west England for an initial isolation period of up to 72 hours, after which they will be asked to isolate at home for 45 days.

US nationals on the ship will be evacuated to an air force base in Nebraska, then transported to a nearby national quarantine centre in Omaha, said the US Centers for Disease Control.

Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Spain’s interior minister, said: “Only when the aircraft bound for a specific country is on the runway, ready to depart for that country, will that country’s nationals be disembarked and taken ashore in small boats.”

Passengers with symptoms could be sent into isolation in a Tenerife hospital, but final decisions on how they would be handled have not been made, said a health ministry official.

Unease over the evacuation has grown in Tenerife, with one union of port workers threatening to blockade the facility.

In a letter to the island’s people on Saturday, Tedros acknowledged the anxiety, but wrote: “I need you to hear me loud and clear: this is not another Covid outbreak. The current public health risk posed by hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have stated this unequivocally, and I repeat it now.”

The outbreak is caused by the Andes hantavirus, which is carried by rodents and often spread via their excreta. It is thought to have been brought on to the Hondius by a Dutch couple who had been on a birdwatching trip to Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. The husband died on the ship and his wife died in Johannesburg after leaving the vessel in St Helena.

The disease’s fatality ratio can reach 50 per cent and it is particularly dangerous to older people, the WHO warned. The average age of passengers on the Hondius is 65, it added.

Of the five confirmed or suspected hantavirus cases who are still alive, four are in hospital — two in the Netherlands and one each in South Africa and Switzerland. The fifth person is on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a British overseas territory.

Two people who spent time on a plane with the Dutch woman who died have been hospitalised in Spain as a precaution. Another person from the same plane is being monitored in South Africa and Italy’s health ministry said on Saturday it was keeping a further four people under surveillance.

German company backed by Spotify’s Daniel Ek set to raise $1.2bn in latest funding round

Helsing, the German defence technology group backed by tech billionaire Daniel Ek, is set to raise new funding at a valuation of about $18bn, cementing its status as one of Europe’s most valuable start-ups.

The $1.2bn fundraising is being led by US firm Dragoneer Investment Group, with existing backer Lightspeed Venture Partners acting as co-lead, according to people familiar with the matter. The plans are at an advanced stage but the timing has not yet been finalised, they added.

Helsing’s funding round is the latest indication of investors’ enthusiasm for the defence sector. Private investment has surged on the promise of higher military spending by Europe’s governments following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The conflict and the proliferation of drones have also spurred changes in battlefield technology.

The valuation marks a substantial increase from less than a year ago, when Helsing raised €600mn in a deal led by Spotify founder Ek’s investment company Prima Materia at a €12bn ($14bn) valuation.

The money pouring into drone developers has prompted some established defence industry players, such as Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger, to warn of a “bubble” in the sector.

But others say that European governments continue to invest too much in “legacy” technology such as conventional tanks and fighter jets, arguing that there should be more investment in unmanned systems and other innovative technologies.

The latest Helsing fundraising was oversubscribed multiple times, said the people familiar with the matter, highlighting investor interest in a new generation of defence start-ups focused on integrating AI into weapons systems.

Europe boasts several defence tech unicorns — start-ups valued at more than $1bn — including drone makers Quantum Systems and Tekever.

Helsing’s competitors include US-based Anduril Industries, founded by billionaire war drone maker Palmer Luckey, which has held talks with investors about a new funding round at a valuation of more than $60bn. In Europe, it vies with companies such as Quantum Systems and Stark, which is backed by US tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

Founded in 2021, Munich-based Helsing originally focused on producing AI software to analyse battlefield data and improve military decision-making.

It has expanded into producing its own kamikaze drones — single-use machines designed to fly into a target and blow it up — and autonomous underwater vessels.

It has also struck partnership deals with some of Europe’s established defence contractors including Sweden’s Saab. It is also working on an unmanned aircraft designed to fly alongside crewed fighter jets.

Helsing has at times faced questions about its products. Its first kamikaze drone, a model called the HF-1 made in collaboration with a Ukrainian partner, drew criticism in Ukraine over its performance and price.

Its successor model, the HX-2, has been approved for frontline use by Ukraine’s military, according to Helsing, which said it had been successfully hitting Russian targets.

The company was recently praised for its work in Ukraine by Oleksandr Kamyshin, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on strategic industries, including defence.

Helsing has also been selected to supply drones to the German armed forces in a deal worth an initial €269mn, with an option of providing more HX-2 drones with a total value of up to €1.46bn in the future.

While Helsing’s new funding round is led by US investment firms, the group remains nearly 80 per cent owned by Europeans, one of the people familiar with the fundraising process said.

The group has previously been backed by investors including Accel, Plural, General Catalyst, Greenoaks, Saab, and BDT & MSD Partners.

Helsing declined to comment. Dragoneer and Lightspeed did not respond to requests for comment.