China’s MIIT to Set Up Third-Party Review of Automakers’ Supplier Payment Terms

This moves automaker payment discipline from voluntary pledges toward an externally verified regime, which matters because supplier financing has effectively been an unregulated credit channel inside China's EV supply chain. Regular tiered assessments and public summons give the ministry a graduated enforcement tool, and the naming-and-shaming element may carry more weight than any formal penalty. The open question is whether third-party evaluators can produce credible, comparable data on payment terms — and whether the largest players, who hold the most bargaining power over suppliers, are assessed on the same basis as smaller ones.