China's Changan builds electric cars, but it started as a 19th-century gun factory
Long before it made family cars and electric SUVs, Changan was an arsenal. Its roots go back to 1862, when the statesman Li Hongzhang set up a weapons workshop in Shanghai. The factory moved from city to city with China's upheavals, and only in 1959 did it build its first vehicle, a jeep.
The workshop became the Suzhou Arsenal in 1863 and moved to Nanjing in 1865, where as the Jinling Arsenal it grew into China's largest; by 1899 it had nearly a thousand machines and 1,700 craftsmen. When Japan invaded in 1937, the government shifted it west to Chongqing as the 21st Arsenal, and after 1949 it became State-Owned Factory 456. The name Changan comes from the Chongqing Changan Arsenal of the 1950s and means long-lasting peace, a slightly ironic label for a weapons works; it is also the name of the old Tang dynasty capital.
In 1959 the arsenal produced the Changjiang Type 46 jeep, described as China's first domestically manufactured production vehicle. The real turn to civilian life came in 1984 through a technical partnership with Suzuki on small vehicles and engines. On 15 November 1984, the first Changan-badged vehicles, a mini van and a mini truck based on Suzuki designs, rolled off the line.
Growth followed fast. Changan bought the smaller makers Hafei and Changhe in 2009 and sold 2.38 million units in 2010, ranking fourth in China. It runs joint ventures with Ford and Mazda, which were separated in 2012, but by 2021 its own brands made up 76 percent of sales. In 2017 it pledged to stop making cars powered only by combustion engines by 2025, and in 2023 it teamed up with Huawei on the Avatr brand of smart vehicles.
Its military ties were formally cut in 2025. After a rumoured merger with Dongfeng was called off that June, the State Council spun Changan out of its defence-industry parent as an independent central state-owned company. China Changan Automobile Group was registered in Chongqing with 20 billion yuan of capital, the first such central enterprise based in the city, and held its founding ceremony on 29 July 2025.
Source: Changan Automobile
