Longbridge opened again yesterday: NAC MG, the present owner of the iconic MG sports’ car brand, ramped up assembly of its MG TF model at a factory that the doomsayers said, two years ago, would never churn out another vehicle again. Even I had my doubts.
   It has only created 130 jobs—6,000 were employed there when MG Rover shut two years ago, and at its peak, 20,000 were—but let’s still applaud men such as NAC’s Yu Jian Wei.
   Yu only has a duty to support the Red Chinese worker. NAC, as a state-owned enterprise, could have happily said, ‘Bugger the overseas markets. Let’s just serve the domestic Chinese market. It’s growing fast enough.’ And he would have saved himself months of headaches.
   Given what the Politburo, the NDRC and other Red agencies are like, Yu must have fought tooth and nail to bring some MG production back to the Midlands. Sure, 130 is short of 1,200, which the unions had expected, but the investment into the new Chinese plant and the restart at Longbridge are costly. And the cars may be nearly the same as the 1995 MGFs, but there are acclaimed cars such as the Chrysler 300 which have roots that are equally old, albeit more extensively revised.
   I may have concerns about the Red Chinese state, but I also know that this man deserves a huge pat on the back. Give him a chance and the 130 workforce will surely increase. He doesn’t need the sort of criticism that might discourage him and make him take the easy way out. Posted by Jack Yan, 05:12  permalink

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