General Motors’s China operation is reducing its workforce, including staff working on research and development, as part of a broader initiative to reduce costs that could include production capacity cuts and business reorganizations, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The Detroit automaker will discuss with local partner SAIC to likely reduce the capacity in their joint plants, while additional job cuts are also under consideration in an effort to focus on making and exporting more premium models, the report added. The news comes after GM lost $104 million in the April-June quarter on its Chinese business, which the company now hopes to return to profitability before its three-decade manufacturing partnership with state-controlled SAIC is set to expire in 2027. GM’s China sales declined by nearly half to 2.1 million units last year from its peak level of 4 million in 2017, and that number was down by more than 50% again to 240,579 units from January to July. [Bloomberg, TechNode reporting]
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