BYD’s factory in Rayong, Thailand, was once hit by a string of mysterious “thefts.” But when inventories were checked, every steel bolt was accounted for. Even the use of protective gear showed no unusual change.
What disappeared was not valuable equipment or raw material. It was the “BYD” logo printed on the plastic labels of bottled water at the workshop’s water station.
The bottles, which should have been placed casually, were always turned to face the same direction. The intact BYD lettering would vanish in neat rows, leaving only the outline of where someone had carefully cut it out with a knife.
Li Youcai (pseudonym) was among the first employees to join BYD’s Rayong project. He told 36Kr that he discovered the missing logos only after being invited to a gathering of local Thai employees.
“One local employee was wearing a T-shirt. It wasn’t our uniform, but there was a BYD logo on the chest,” Li said. “I got closer and realized it was the plastic logo from the bottled water. They had carefully glued it onto the shirt.”
After Li asked around, local employees began showing him their own BYD-logo “merchandise,” including hats, shoes, and even a Fiat car.
To Li, the incident suggested that BYD had become more than an employer in Rayong. It had become a workplace identity that some local employees wanted to display.
“They just wanted other people to know they worked at BYD,” Li told 36Kr. “In Rayong, BYD is like a foreign company in China in the 1990s. Everyone recognizes that BYD makes good products, has solid technology, offers a good environment and benefits, and gives people room to grow.”
The blue uniforms BYD issued for free also became a form of social capital in Rayong. Employees would often report their uniforms as lost and ask for replacements.
Li told 36Kr that BYD uniforms in Rayong now carry the same kind of prestige that Samsung and SK Hynix uniforms do in South Korea. “They didn’t actually lose their uniforms. A lot of their relatives and friends wanted BYD clothes, so they gave them away.”
In China, BYD is known for competing aggressively on price. In Rayong, it has become a coveted employer. That shift took place within two years of BYD beginning construction of the factory.
Over the past several years, Chinese automakers and their core suppliers have accelerated their overseas expansion. In the past three years, Chinese automakers have planned or opened more than 15 overseas passenger vehicle production bases, according to 36Kr. BYD has been one of the most aggressive. Its overseas sales rose from 400,000 vehicles in 2024 to 1.05 million in 2025, and it has set a target of up to 1.6 million vehicles this year.
Beyond exports, local manufacturing and local supply chains have become a more durable globalization strategy for large regional markets such as Europe and Southeast Asia. BYD’s Thailand factory was built against that backdrop.
Thailand’s location and trade policies have made it a major production base for right-hand-drive vehicles by Japanese brands, with annual output of about 1.3 million vehicles for those companies. BYD has said on multiple occasions that its Thailand factory is not meant to serve only the local market. It wants to use Thailand as a base to reach ASEAN and the broader right-hand-drive market.
But cultural integration and labor issues in Southeast Asia have challenged many companies expanding overseas. Even Apple and Foxconn’s factory operations in India once faced disruption after Chinese engineers were withdrawn.
In two years, BYD has managed to get an overseas factory running, integrate multiple workplace cultures inside the plant, and bring production efficiency closer to the level of its factories in China. In doing so, it has offered a case study for Chinese automakers trying to move from exports to local production.
According to 36Kr, in the first year of BYD’s Thailand factory, its employee turnover rate was already below the 12% average cited by Thai trade unions. Now, Chinese companies including Great Wall Motor and Changan Automobile are offering salary increases of up to 50% to poach Thai engineers trained by BYD.
Back in 2023, amid the dust of the Rayong construction site and rumors that Chinese companies in the area often saw employee turnover rates of 50%, Li could hardly imagine what BYD would have to do to win people over in Thailand.
Two years of preparation
BYD’s Rayong project team was established in 2022. Li told 36Kr that although BYD had already been involved in commercial vehicle retail and partnerships in Thailand, no one on the project team felt confident about setting up a factory locally.
“We weren’t worried about the buildings and equipment. We Chinese could just go over and build those,” he said. “The first big challenge on our minds was how to recruit Thai engineers and get them to learn BYD’s system.”
According to data from the International Labour Organization, Southeast Asia has a higher incidence of labor disputes than the global average. Even Apple and Foxconn’s factories rely heavily on Chinese engineers to operate.
BYD did not rush to send people to Thailand. Instead, it had the team stay in China and spend a full year on desk research.
“The group prepared a lot of materials: Thai policies, culture, business environment, factory conditions, and especially information on Toyota, Sanhua, and Ford’s factories in Thailand,” Li told 36Kr. Studying written materials alone took nearly three months.
The most demanding part of the preparation was converting every process and detail in BYD’s R&D and production workflows into operating manuals, then filming them as videos. Everything had to be produced in both Chinese and Thai.
Thailand’s automotive sector has a distinct profile. It has long operated within Japanese brands’ systems and has trained hundreds of thousands of skilled technicians. But engineers who understand core technologies remain scarce, and there is an acute shortage of talent in supporting sectors for new energy vehicles, including batteries.
For Chinese new energy vehicle companies, it is not easy to turn local workers with basic assembly capabilities into employees who understand systems, standards, and process documents.
“We had heard plenty of cautionary tales,” Li said. “At some companies, as soon as the Chinese engineers left, local employees could no longer understand the operating manuals.”
Li told 36Kr that one of the team’s guiding principles was that even if Thai colleagues could no longer contact Chinese employees in the future, they should still be able to use those texts and videos to independently solve sudden problems on the production line.
“We had to consider every detail. Even problems that had never appeared in Chinese factories had to be written down one by one and captured on camera.”
As desk preparation and factory construction neared completion, BYD began local hiring. Its first tool was pay.
In Rayong, the monthly salary for a typical electronics or machinery production worker is about RMB 2,000 (USD 294.8). In Bangkok, similar roles usually pay around RMB 3,000 (USD 442.2) per month.
Several sources told 36Kr that BYD’s salary levels were 30% higher than those in Bangkok. Production workers generally earned RMB 4,000 (USD 589.7) per month, while some core skilled workers could earn RMB 6,000 (USD 884.5). Engineering talent was relatively scarce, so BYD had to recruit from mature companies. “Offering 30–50% higher salaries to hire people was common,” one person said.
The pay structure at the Rayong base also differs from that in China.
On top of base pay, BYD set up monthly performance bonuses, quarterly bonuses, and annual bonuses. Working hours strictly comply with labor law, and overtime pay is higher: double pay for regular weekends and triple pay for holidays. Employees get 15 days of annual leave each year, which can be cashed out if unused. Some production line positions also receive separate allowances.
Once people were hired, a harder question emerged: how could BYD keep Thai employees and reduce turnover?
Li told 36Kr that production line technicians account for more than 90% of employees. “Chinese people really can’t guess what locals are thinking. The recruitment agencies were blunt: These technicians are hard to manage. Some people work for a month, get an advance on their salary, and leave right after receiving it. This isn’t a problem unique to BYD. Many local Thai factories have the same headache.”
“Our approach was to understand people first,” Li said.
He and his team members visited the homes of grassroots workers in Rayong. “Poorer families lived in wooden houses, similar to China in the 1980s. Sometimes, when it rained heavily, water would leak in. There was no air conditioning. The whole family had just one electric fan. That is the reality for most families of grassroots production workers.”
As early as 2010, chairman and CEO Wang Chuanfu had described BYD’s management philosophy in plain terms:
“If you are an entrepreneur, you have to think about your employees the way elderly parents think about their children. Only if you take good care of them will they take good care of your company, and then take good care of your profits.”
BYD’s Rayong base has put that idea into practice.
“The Chinese colleagues who went there early endured all the hardship so they could create a good environment for Thai colleagues,” Li told 36Kr.
In the early stages of construction, manpower was tight. The canteen’s utensils and ingredients, uniforms and protective gear, and appliances and bedding for employee dormitories all fell to his team.
“There were only a handful of people on the team. We went back and forth between Rayong, Chonburi, and Bangkok to make purchases. I even lived in an unfinished dormitory building for half a month. You have to experience it yourself to know where things can be improved,” Li said.
The general manager of BYD’s Rayong base had previously held a key management role at one of BYD’s bases in China. Several people close to the Rayong base told 36Kr that after he arrived at the factory site, his biggest priorities, aside from construction progress, were production safety and the comfort issues that directly affected employees’ daily lives.
“At every weekly meeting, he would emphasize that whatever standard Chinese bases could meet, the Rayong base had to meet too. We couldn’t lower standards just because conditions were tough.”
“He walked almost every corner of the plant himself. Which corner of the workshop needed more fans, which stretch of road was too long and needed a fixed shuttle route—his guidance for the factory was very detailed and practical.”
From the initial desk research plan to the rollout of facilities and services, BYD’s Rayong base spent two years on preparation. The reason was simple: Chinese companies arriving in Thailand had little trust to rely on.
The prior impression of Chinese workers as people who endure hardship and extreme overtime, followed by BYD’s Rayong factory rising from the ground in just 16 months, gave some Thai workers reason to be wary from the start.
Early Chinese automakers in Thailand also tended to bring a familiar management assumption: if pay is high enough, employees should be willing to work overtime. But in practice, employees were often unwilling to do so, and turnover rates at some factories reached 30–50%, far above the local average.
To break the deadlock, BYD had to prove that it wasn’t operating a sweatshop.
When BYD’s mattresses were softer than Toyota’s, its food tasted better than that of Thai electronics factories, and its shuttle routes were more practical than Ford’s, it was sending a message to Thai workers: the company did not hire them only to keep an assembly line moving. It wanted them to feel that their daily experience at work mattered.
That was only the groundwork. For a factory, production capacity remains the primary measure of success. The real test began when the production line started running.
Teaching production without importing China’s management culture
In the early days, BYD used a one-on-one mentorship model in Rayong.
“We brought over a large number of engineers and production team leaders from China. Most people in those roles spoke English. For departments where they didn’t, we assigned two interpreters and also prepared translation devices and translation software. The teaching went relatively smoothly, but friction between different cultures was inevitable.”
One conflict left a mark on Li.
“One day, just before work ended, a Thai employee came to me and said a Chinese engineer had called him stupid. He was very angry and even wanted to resign,” Li told 36Kr.
Li immediately called the factory manager and asked the Chinese engineer in charge of coaching to come to the site. “We went through it sentence by sentence to see which line had made the Thai employee feel offended. In the end, it turned out the Chinese engineer had simply spoken in a more hurried and louder tone.”
“Things like this happened often in the beginning,” Li added.
Among some Thai workers, there is a commonly cited phrase that roughly translates as “take it easy” or “don’t rush.” They believe people earn money in order to live, not that people live only to earn money. When the workday ends, they leave: to go home, take part in temple activities, meet friends, or attend to their own plans. They care about workplace atmosphere and dignity among colleagues. Methods can be taught and mistakes can be pointed out, but people cannot be embarrassed in public.
BYD began rolling out measures including weekly discussion sessions, complaint mailboxes, complaint QR codes, and an always-open factory manager’s office.
“As long as you feel uncomfortable, you can go to the factory manager and speak up immediately.”
Leaders at all levels emphasized daily that Thai colleagues had to be respected. They insisted on patient teaching, more encouragement, and no direct criticism or verbal abuse. Complaints from Thai employees had to be handled the same day. If they could not be resolved immediately, a deadline for a response had to be agreed upon. At the factory level, BYD implemented an internal program that linked employee satisfaction to the factory’s monthly performance bonus pool.
In Thailand, dignity is an invisible red line. The social consensus is that no matter how much authority someone has, it should not be used to crush another person’s sense of face.
BYD, meanwhile, was an unfamiliar Chinese-funded factory. Local workers’ nerves were stretched tight. A colder look from a Chinese employee, or a slightly raised voice, could be read as an insult.
If conflicts were mishandled, BYD would face not only employee turnover, but also the lasting reputation of being a bad employer. That could have made its local expansion plans harder.
“The general manager even issued an instruction at the time: If a conflict broke out between Chinese and Thai employees, the Chinese employee had to give way first,” Li told 36Kr. “Sometimes I wondered whether the leaders were being too soft-kneed. Why were we being so good to foreigners? We couldn’t even say anything.”
It was only when the base calculated its employee turnover rate and found that it was below 10% that Li began to understand the logic behind those rules. [Source needed]
But a new problem soon arrived. Chinese employees’ overseas assignments were limited in duration, while policy requirements for the share of Thai employees kept increasing. The Thailand factory had to learn to operate on its own as quickly as possible.
Handing the reins to Thai managers
There is a clear divide between Chinese and Thai workplace cultures. In China, as long as someone is a leader, that person can manage you. In Thailand, many people recognize only their direct supervisor. They do not readily accept instructions that skip levels. Lecture-style management, common in China, was poorly suited to Thailand. Thai employees did not accept a topdown, one-way mode of instruction.
At the end of 2024, the Rayong base began implementing a “seed talent program.”
“We selected outstanding employees from among team leaders and engineers—people who recognized BYD’s culture and had a relatively strong interest in China—and sent them to China for training. After returning to Thailand, they would take on key management roles,” Li told 36Kr.
The first group sent to China for training included more than 100 Thai employees.
After arriving in China, these Thai employees underwent three months of training. “A Chinese employee in the same position would be assigned to eat and live with them. They would visit two to three BYD bases in China, learn the full process from new vehicle R&D and trial production to mass production, understand the backgrounds and daily lives of BYD engineers, and even take part in some activities related to Chinese culture.”
After returning to the Rayong base, they became managers within the Thai employee team and served as bridges between Chinese and Thai employees.
Later, when problems arose on the production line, Chinese employees first had to find the relevant manager, describe the problem, and demonstrate the correct method.
“After they understood the problem and solution, they would communicate with the employee involved in whatever way they thought was appropriate. In other words, Chinese employees no longer had to figure out every Thai employee’s temperament. We only needed to communicate with this manager, who had already received more complete BYD training,” Li said.
The seed talent program has since become a long-term plan for Rayong and other overseas units.
“We prepared quite thoroughly, but Thai employees’ work habits are still different from those of Chinese employees,” Li said.
Thailand has many public holidays, and most employees refuse to work overtime on holidays. “There is also a fallback policy: If Thai employees can’t handle something, Chinese employees step in. In the early stage, Chinese employees on overseas assignments often worked until 9 or 10 p.m.”
Over two years, BYD’s Rayong factory moved beyond the shallow overseas expansion model of building a plant and making cars. It explored an on-the-ground approach that spans compensation and benefits, cultural inclusion, and local talent development. Compared with the labor conflicts and talent gaps that have stalled some automakers overseas, the Rayong factory has become an instructive example for Chinese automakers.
Why the Rayong model is hard to replicate
For its first overseas base, BYD invested heavily in preparation, training, and local operations.
Even so, 12–18 months after production began, when the capacity ramp-up should have been largely complete, its capacity utilization rate was still below 50%, according to 36Kr. That was better than many overseas factories, but still below stronger performers. During the same period, Toyota’s pickup truck factory in Thailand held steady above 80%, while some BYD bases in China reached as high as 95%.
At the same time, BYD’s sales in Southeast Asia rose sharply in 2025. Sales were up more than 60% year-on-year in Thailand, surged 200% in Indonesia, where BYD became the bestselling brand, and jumped 400% in the Philippines.
The purpose of building a factory in Thailand was to use it as a fulcrum for the Southeast Asian right-hand-drive market and as a manufacturing base for regional expansion. The reality is that the Thailand factory’s capacity ramp-up is still lagging behind BYD’s sales growth in the region.
In 2026, BYD has set a higher target for its overseas business: annual sales of more than 1.5 million vehicles. But the actual annual capacity of its self-built roll-on, roll-off fleet is about 800,000 vehicles. If the remaining 700,000 vehicles depend on third-party shipping capacity, high freight costs will erode overseas profits. Accelerating capacity release at overseas factories has therefore become a priority.
By sales structure, the fastest-growing regions globally are currently South America and ASEAN, centered on Thailand. BYD’s Brazil factory began production in 2025 and remains in the ramp-up phase. Its Indonesia factory is still under construction, with production targeted by the end of the year.
The Rayong factory has always occupied a special position. It laid the first brick for BYD’s overseas manufacturing network. Now it is also the first to face the question of how to keep expanding production.
BYD has only just learned how to build a factory overseas. But Li told 36Kr that colleagues from the Rayong project team who were transferred to Brazil found that they had to “start from zero” again, saying nothing could be simply reused.
In 2025, BYD’s Brazil factory was investigated by the Brazilian government after a contractor violated labor rules by making 31 people share one restroom. “Chinese people find it hard to imagine how strict other countries’ requirements for working conditions are, and they also find it hard to imagine what might make employees stop working,” Li told 36Kr. Although the Rayong factory required enormous effort and still only achieved 50% capacity utilization, “if you don’t take this seriously, you won’t even be able to start operations.”
Chinese companies can bring standardized, steel-reinforced factory buildings and production line equipment anywhere. But the social foundations on which that equipment runs cannot be copied. Even within ASEAN, Thailand and Indonesia may have similar climates, but their religious beliefs, family structures, cultures, and education systems are different. Thailand is predominantly Buddhist, while Indonesia is predominantly Muslim.
Building factories overseas is becoming unavoidable for Chinese automakers. What they lack is not a blueprint, but a playbook that can work repeatedly across countries.
BYD’s Rayong base shows a simple truth: when Chinese companies build factories overseas, they must first become employers worthy of respect. The way to earn that respect may vary by market.
In China, it may depend on pay and human connection.
In Germany, it may depend on reliability and rules.
In Thailand, it may depend on dignity and personal growth.
In South America, it may require proof of long-term commitment.
Ultimately, wherever a company goes, the principle is the same. Admired businesses become part of a place, rather than simply passing through it.
KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Xu Caiyu for 36Kr.
Note: RMB figures are converted to USD at rates of RMB 6.78 = USD 1 based on estimates as of June 19, 2026, unless otherwise stated. USD conversions are presented for ease of reference and may not fully match prevailing exchange rates.