The automobile company Hongqi (“red flag”) has a long history of producing Chinese versions of Western vehicles, sometimes licensed (Audi, Toyota, Lincoln) and sometimes not (see accompanying photograph of the Hongqi H9, eerily similar to a Roll-Royce Ghost, even down to the characteristic two-tone paint scheme). However, unlike with sensitive Western technologies as varied as the W-88 nuclear warhead and the 7-nm 5G silicon chip, this was not necessarily the result of illicit espionage—in 2018, Hongqi hired Rolls-Royce’s former chief of design.
But the similarities with R-R are only skin deep: Jeremy Clarkson, testing a Hongqi for the British television program “Top Gear,” noted that the power-to-weight ratio was only equal to that of the lowly Peugeot 308 diesel, and that there was no official 0-60 time because the car probably couldn’t make it that fast.
ASH WEDNESDAY