In the scrubby hills outside the Moroccan port city of Tangier the latest manifestation of China’s automotive manufacturing might is rising rapidly on a 500-hectare site carved out of farmland.
Sheep still graze right up to the high walls of the Mohammed VI Tanger Tech City, home to an emerging cluster of Chinese makers of auto parts from brakes to battery components hoping to help power Europe’s electric vehicle revolution.
But alarm is growing in Brussels that the billions of dollars Chinese companies plan to invest in Morocco could turn the north African nation into a launch pad for heavily subsidised goods that threaten to swamp European industry.