The collapse of General Motors’ fortunes in Communist China is coming into focus as a marker of America’s dysfunctional relationship with the People’s Republic. GM is learning the hard way about the perils of doing business with the comrades at Beijing. What were American lawmakers and corporations thinking, though, when they set out to strengthen trade ties with the communists, even granting them “most favored nation” status? 

GM’s auto sales in the Middle Kingdom “have entered a death spiral,” the Times reports. It points to a “dizzying collapse of its China business,” with sales down 42.5 percent this year alone. The scale of GM’s debacle is evidenced by a $5 billion write-down this month, prompted by “weakness in its China business that will force the automaker to close plants and offer fewer models,” the Wall Street Journal reports. 

It’s a remarkable reversal of fortune for GM, which was, in the Times’ telling, a “pioneer in China,” where it had for nearly 30 years generated “enormous profits” and contended with Volkswagen as the largest seller of cars. The “drastic comedown,” as the Times puts it, “tracks the experience of all foreign automakers” in the People’s Republic, which now stands as the largest market in the world for automobiles.

GM isn’t the only American corporation getting burned by “the end of the great China gold rush,” as Business Insider puts it. “US companies are losing market share to China-based rivals. Beset by political and economic forces, American brands can no longer count on China for growth.” Sales of Apple iPhones and Nike sneakers are down. Chinese consumers are getting their coffee from a local chain, Luckin, and eschewing Starbucks.