According to Chinese news sources, a vehicle built by Chinese carmaker Chery but badged as a Dodge and sold by Chrysler, LLC will soon be introduced in Mexico.  The car is the first vehicle produced under a deal arranged by former Chrysler president Tom LaSorda and Chery, one which had been rumored to be in trouble.
   
Chery is the Chinese company which produced two of the vehicles that recently failed to pass safety tests in Europe and Russia, crumpling, according to one report, like a “tin can.”
   
Chery is government-owned by one of the Chinese provinces, and has a history of rapid growth, more recently actually focusing on product quality.  However, the company also has a history of flagrant design piracy, including stealing designs from General Motors, Daewoo, acts which they were able to get away with because the Western companies were unable to achieve any semblance of due process in Chinese courts and because GM decided not to offend Chinese government officials while they were trying to expand their interests in the Chinese market.
   
It is not clear that Chery actually makes money, at least not in the traditional sense of a profit.  The Chinese government has poured vast sums of money into development of industrial infrastructure in the past decade, without explaining it in generally understood accounting.  Only yesterday, the World Bank announced that previous estimates of the Chinese economy had overstated it’s actual true domestic product by 40%.  Though that still makes China the second largest economy in the world, behind the United States, it does so largely because of its vast population.
   
That population, however, won’t be buying a Chery anytime soon.  According to the World Bank, 300,000,000 – that’s 300 million – Chinese subsist on less than one dollar per day.