The Chinese motorcycle invasion of Europe is certainly growing. But many people in the trade are unaware of the extent to which it reaches and how much of it features a wily multi-billionaire gentleman called Eric Li Shufu. Founder of Geely Holding, probably China’s biggest independent automotive manufacturer with international muscle, in which he retains a 78.7% personal stake, Li Shufu has myriad connections on two wheels and four.
In our neck of the woods, he’s best known for becoming a dominant shareholder in Qianjiang Motorcycle Group in 2016. Initially encapsulating what is now known as QJ Motor, along with the associated Keeway brand, Qianjiang swallowed struggling Italian motorcycle business Benelli in 2005, which has since prospered with its products assembled in Wenling, China. The defunct Italian Morbidelli brand was added to Qianjiang’s roster in April 2024.
However, his biker interest is spectacularly dwarfed by Li Shufu’s automotive activity. Geely Holding was already making a vast number of cars in China when it bought the Volvo car business from Ford for a mere $1.8bn in 2010. Li Shufu became Volvo chairman, a post he still holds, retaining Håkan Samuelsson as chief executive based at Volvo’s primary base in Gothenburg. Besides its home turf in Sweden, Volvo also has overseas plants in South Carolina, Belgium, Slovakia and Daqing in China. The Geely acquisition trail didn’t stop there. In 2018, LI Shufu became the largest single shareholder in Daimler Benz with a 9.7% stake, now rebranded as Mercedes-Benz Group and including AMG and Maybach, while hiving off its commercial truck operations. And somewhere along the way, he trousered a slice of Aston Martin, plus the whole of Lotus Group International and EV specialist Polestar. These now add up to one of the world’s largest auto empires, harnessing an extensive portfolio of brands outside China.
All this has now become suddenly topical because the EV invasion of Europe has been progressively suckered by heavy-duty EU tariffs on those built in China. Li Shufu recently said his group needed to embrace opportunities for collaboration in the face of geopolitical tensions and an end to an era of globalisation. Speaking at a Volvo Cars HQ interview in Gothenburg, he opined: “I think the solution for Geely and Volvo is for us to utilise our common capacity to develop.”
In China alone, experts estimate annual demand of about 25 million cars against the estimated factory capacity of 45 million to 50 million. The prolonged price war and eroding industry margins have forced Chinese companies like main opposition BYD to produce vehicles at new plants in Hungary and Turkey, while aggressively expanding exports. But according to Volvo’s Samuelsson, it’s less costly to make use of existing European plants with enough spare capacity to share with Geely Auto and other brands under its portfolio. “We don’t believe the tariffs we have today will go away,” insists Samuelsson. “In addition to shared production, we could very well have many more common parts and modules in our cars, without jeopardising our brand.”
Li Shufu reckons there are 17 significant car manufacturers in China competing for market share, many of which are loss-making. Geely, which also offers petrol-engined cars, has benefited from the Beijing government’s cuts to EV subsidies, and its sales in the first two months of 2026 have overtaken those of BYD. Geely has been gaining market share in the EV segment too, which includes plug-in hybrids. Geely Auto is aiming to increase global sales by 14% this year to 3.5 million vehicles, with an internal target to sell 750,000 units outside China.
As part of this new direction, Li Shufu has been expanding technology and manufacturing collaboration between his group companies. Geely Auto merged with its Zeekr and Lynk EV sub-brands and shut down Ji Yue, a joint EV brand with Baidu. Maybe it’s also time for Li Shufu to crank up the action in his Chinese motorcycling interests as well, as the EV market implodes and European biker tastes move away from Japan and the Indian sub-continent?