Recently, Li Fenggang’s departure from the general manager post at Beijing Hyundai has drawn considerable industry attention. He took office on November 10, 2025, and left on November 1, 2026—less than a full year—with the official explanation being “personal reasons.”

Li’s résumé is solid: a Tsinghua graduate who spent 22 years in the FAW system, rising from R&D roles to executive deputy general manager of FAW Audi Sales Company. When he took over last year, he won considerable applause—for the first time in Beijing Hyundai’s 24-year history, a Chinese national was sitting in the general manager’s chair, and the word “localization” was on everyone’s lips.

A year later, the report card on localization reads like this: the board of directors did not hold a single proper meeting all year.

That is not an exaggeration. According to Yicai, citing people familiar with the matter, this 50-50 joint venture between BAIC and Hyundai saw its board deadlocked all year over fundamental issues such as sales targets and cost-reduction quotas. The Chinese side wanted to push sales, contain losses, and bring in local supply chains; the Korean side wanted to protect profits and shield the existing Korean supplier base—70 to 80 percent of fuel-vehicle suppliers are in the Korean system, and touching any of them is a big deal.

The cost of the deadlock is concrete. In July, when tensions peaked, dealer policies and promotional plans were suspended, supplier payments were temporarily halted, and the sales system nearly ground to a halt. It dragged on until September, when the two sides reached a “temporary consensus”: abandoning the targets set at the start of the year, cutting annual sales to about 160,000 vehicles, and keeping losses at around 1.9 billion yuan.

In an industry context, Beijing Hyundai is not an isolated case. Data from the China Passenger Car Association shows that in July 2026, mainstream joint venture brands retailed 290,000 vehicles, with market share down to about 20 percent; in 2020, that figure was still above 60 percent. In five years, the joint venture pie has shrunk by two-thirds.

The reasons for the retreat have long been exhaustively discussed in the industry: vehicle definition authority sits with overseas headquarters, and the iteration speed of smart cockpits and intelligent driving cannot keep up with the Chinese market; costs cannot be pushed below those of local supply chains; and for a new model, from project approval to launch, independent brands take a year and a half, while a joint venture going through headquarters’ approval process is considered fast at two years. The old formula of “import overseas models, produce in China, brand premium” has seen all three premises fail simultaneously.

The collective response of the joint venture camp is to shift definition authority toward Chinese teams. Volkswagen built an R&D center in Hefei; Mercedes-Benz’s Ola Källenius said the China R&D team “more or less already has autonomy”; and Beijing Hyundai brought in a Chinese person as general manager—the direction is the same. The difference is that others are slow, while Beijing Hyundai has stopped. A 50:50 shareholding ratio means either side can hit the brakes, and hitting the brakes needs no reason: if the board does not hold a substantive meeting for a year, neither sales targets nor cost-reduction plans can be set. The decision-making sluggishness common in the industry, applied to this shareholding structure, becomes a decision-making vacuum.

Li Fenggang himself once said: “A considerable part of my energy goes into taking the Korean R&D team out to dinner.” He was given the title, but not the resources or decision-making power. Key positions remain predominantly held by Korean nationals, and in many matters the general manager is more like a mouthpiece.

Somewhat ironically, Li Fenggang made trending news once in July this year. At the China Auto Forum, he lashed out at “instant cars,” saying some brands do only one stage of validation, “and customers unfortunately become guinea pigs.” The remarks were quoted by People’s Daily, and he became known in the industry as someone who dared to speak out. Looking back now, his own tenure was a textbook instant sample—he came fast and left even faster.

The electrification numbers are even uglier. Beijing Hyundai has two new energy vehicles on sale: the EO Yio sold 67 units in September; the Ioniq V was the product of his most vigorous localization reform, with a 1,500-person Chinese team doing product definition, CATL batteries, and Momenta intelligent driving. It launched on September 29 and registered 135 vehicles in its first full month. Meanwhile, the “Smart Start 2030” plan calls for launching 20 new models in four to five years and annual sales of 500,000 vehicles.

At its peak, Beijing Hyundai sold 1.14 million vehicles in 2016. In the first half of this year, it sold only 94,700, still declining year on year. In Hyundai Group’s Q3 financial report, retail volume in the Chinese market fell 50.2 percent, the steepest drop of any region. Product planning is even more telling: North America has 58 new models scheduled, Europe 41, and China only 22—fewer than India.

But it would be wrong to say Hyundai is about to withdraw from China. At the end of 2024, the two shareholders jointly injected about 8 billion yuan in real money. The real answer is exports: in the first half of this year, Beijing Hyundai exported 47,000 vehicles, nearly half of total sales, and by 2030 that proportion is to rise above 50 percent. The role of Chinese factories is shifting from market to export base.

So Li Fenggang’s departure can hardly be blamed on any one person. Product definition authority, procurement authority, pricing authority—none of them were truly in his hands. What Beijing Hyundai lacks is not another general manager, but an environment in which a general manager can actually get things done—an environment that the Chinese and Korean shareholders have been arguing over for a year and still have not worked out.