Dongfeng began as a truck works hidden among forty valleys, safe from air raids
China's planners wanted a military truck factory that bombers could not easily find. In 1969 they settled on a village of 100 people in Hubei, tucked among more than 40 shallow valleys. By 1972 it had built only 200 vehicles. That hideaway grew into Shiyan city and into Dongfeng, one of China's four big state carmakers.
The idea went back to the Korean War, when China needed battlefield trucks and planned a copy of the Soviet GAZ-51. Sites in Wuhan were rejected in 1955 as too exposed to air attack; Chengdu and later Hunan were considered, and work at Shiyan began in 1960 before stopping abruptly. The split with the Soviet Union revived the project, and the Second Automobile Works entered the five-year plan in 1965. The valleys let workshops be scattered out of sight, and a railway line passed nearby.
Its first 2.5-ton truck, the EQ240, rolled out in 1975, followed in 1978 by the five-ton EQ140, the company's first civilian model, which at its peak held two thirds of China's market. Deng Xiaoping's reforms merged scattered plants and provincially run companies into a single enterprise, and output passed 100,000 a year in 1986. The name Dongfeng, meaning East Wind, arrived in 1992.
That same year it formed its first foreign partnership, with Citroën. Kia, Honda and Nissan joint ventures followed in the early 2000s, and a 50:50 deal with Renault in 2013 made six such partners, more than any other Chinese automaker. The balance of its output flipped too: commercial vehicles made up about 73% of production in 2001, while by 2012 passenger vehicles did, though that count may include tiny microvans. In 2014 Dongfeng helped rescue the loss-making Peugeot Citroën, taking a 14% stake.
Foreign-branded models accounted for 79% of sales in 2021, and with 671,000 sales in 2023 Dongfeng was the smallest of the Big Four, behind SAIC, Changan and FAW. The state assets commission SASAC controls it.
Source: Dongfeng Motor Corporation
