China’s EV Dream Goes Up in Smoke — Massive Fire Rocks Fujian!

On October 5th, an Evita 06 electric vehicle suddenly caught fire in the parking lot of a scenic area in Ningde City, Fujian Province. The fire quickly spread, igniting seven nearby vehicles, many reduced to their frames. Fortunately, no casualties were reported. Netizens said they are now afraid to buy electric cars after seeing so many reports of spontaneous combustion. According to multiple media outlets, including the Financial Times and Cover News, the incident occurred in Dongbi Village, Sanshitown, Ningde City, one of China's key rural tourism villages. The Evita 06 suddenly caught fire, and the flames spread rapidly, igniting nearby Audi, BMW, Mazda, and Aeon vehicles. Thick smoke billowed from the scene. Video footage showed smoke initially rising from the passenger seat of the vehicle. About half an hour later, the flames spread to surrounding cars, leaving several burned down to their frames. Firefighters extinguished the blaze at around 3.35 p.m. Fortunately, no one was hurt. A staff member from the Dongbi Village committee said the owner was nearby. Three people returned and opened the door, presumably to start the car. Then a fire broke out. We immediately took control and kept people away. The cause of the fire is now under investigation by the fire department. The vehicle was newly purchased on August 28 and had traveled only 1,066 kilometers. App data provided by the owner showed that the interior temperature reached 76.4 degrees Celsius before the fire, far above normal levels. This points to a possible thermal management failure in the battery system, leading to overheating and thermal runaway. Although Evita claims its batteries meet national safety standards, high temperatures may accelerate internal chemical reactions, increasing the risk of spontaneous combustion. The sudden ignition of a new car could also be linked to charging issues, such as a faulty charger, a failed battery management system, BMS, or excessively high charging temperatures that may cause overcharging or short-circuiting. The fire destroyed eight vehicles in total, including several high-end models like Audi and BMW, resulting in substantial insurance losses. For car owners, the damage means not only financial loss, but also daily disruption. For the scenic site, the blaze may have damaged parking facilities and raised operational costs. As a rising new energy vehicle brand, Evita now faces potential damage to its reputation. Consumers are increasingly worried about the safety of electric cars, and this incident could spark doubts about battery technology and quality control affecting buying confidence. Netizens commented, I've seen so many reports of EVS catching fire that I'm afraid to buy one. Oh my god, I was planning to buy an M9, but after this, I'm reconsidering. Maybe I'll just stick with a gasoline car. I always park far away from new energy vehicles. Tesla seems fine, but others feel unsafe. Do you know why insurance premiums are rising? Even gasoline car premiums are affected by EV fires. Will insurance companies fully compensate other vehicles that caught fire? If not, what happens if the EV owner can't pay? Park your car away from them. Electric cars rely on wiring to transmit power. As the vehicle ages, the wiring deteriorates, reducing safety. That's one reason used electric cars depreciate so quickly. Across China, shopping malls were deserted during the National Day holiday, as business owners cried that no one came. Across China, countless shopping malls stood empty during the National Day holiday, a time that should have been filled with crowds and celebration. Instead, it turned into a scene of silence. Business owners across the country lamented the same thing. No one came. From Yiwu and Xiamen on the southeastern coast to inland Wuhan, supermarkets, malls, and farmers markets were deserted. What should have been China's biggest shopping week has instead become a magnifying glass, exposing the chill spreading through its economy. In cities like Yiwu, Shaoxing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and Guangzhou, foot traffic plummeted. It's never been this quiet, one mall owner said. In all my years, not during any holiday, seven days, eight days, have I seen such emptiness. Even restaurants nearby felt the drop. This year, she said, is truly different. In Xiamen, Xiuwen said the streets were eerily silent. Many shops were closed, and even open ones had no customers. It's not that businesses are lazy. The environment itself is collapsing. A shop owner in Guangzhou agreed. In past years, traffic was jammed. This year, there are no people, no cars, nothing. In Shaoxing, a netizen named Ma Cheng said, we have seven or eight million people here, but no one is on the streets, no tourists, no shoppers, no workers. When China had 1.2 billion people, the streets were full. Now with 1.4 billion, there's no one. Where did everyone go? Even in Shenzhen, China's most dynamic city near Hong Kong, the story is the same. Chiang-Zi, a clothing seller at Dongmen Old Street wrote, shops can't even be rented, let alone sold. Once they went for over 2 million yuan, now owners are paying rent just to keep them. He warned, don't touch mall shops. Once operations fail, everything collapses. Another netizen added, if this continues, China's real economy will be destroyed. When brick-and-mortar stores die, online goods will get expensive and fake, and people will lose their jobs. Even state-owned enterprises are feeling the strain. Ms. Li, who works at one, said her company hasn't paid wages for two months. Public institutions are only paying base salaries now, no bonuses, no benefits. I used to think we were stable, but now even we are short of cash. Independent economist Chen Jun believes the root cause is lost confidence. This didn't start overnight, he said. It began in 2021, but people didn't see it because of lockdowns. When China reopened in 2023, the stagnation became clear. Videos on WeChat and Douyin show the truth. Supermarkets in Guangdong offering 50% clearance sales before shutting down. Shop owners begging for customers to hang on a little longer. In Wuhan, young travelers called the budget nomads sleep on sidewalks and cook noodles beside their tents. Better save for food than waste money on hotels, one joked. In the farmers' markets, shop owners selling dried mushrooms and tofu sheets wait in vain for buyers. In past holidays, one said, business was booming. This year, no one came across social media. People are asking, why is this happening? But the most common comment reads, we know the China is sinking into its darkest crisis in decades. Jobless streets, collapsing cities, broken promises. This is the reality Beijing doesn't want the world to see, where we uncover the stories buried behind propaganda. Today, we take you inside an unfolding disaster, one that threatens to rewrite the future of the world's second-largest economy. Nearly 4 out of every 10 working-age Chinese have no stable job. Once-crowded metropolises are fading into ghost towns. Families that dreamed of prosperity now face hunger and homelessness. Those who can flee are leaving in waves. Those left behind are trapped in poverty, waiting for hope that never comes. This isn't tomorrow's danger. It's happening as we speak. For decades, China sold the world its miracle story. Glittering skyscrapers rising from farmland, endless rail lines connecting vast provinces, and the made-in-China label dominating global trade. Millions of rural workers abandoned their villages for the promise of city wages, fuelling what state media hailed as the birth of a new middle class. To the outside world, it looked unstoppable. But the foundation was rotten. China's miracle ran on cheap labour, reckless government spending, and a housing bubble inflated beyond reason. Ghost cities with towers of empty apartments became symbols of growth, yet they were illusions. Factories churned out exports, but the country's fate hinged on foreign demand. When global markets slowed, the cracks split open. By the mid-2010s, the gamble became deadly. Developers borrowed mountains of debt, families poured savings into fragile apartments, and local governments survived by selling land. Then came the shocks. The US trade war, a pandemic that crushed small businesses, and mass youth unemployment. Developers went bankrupt, homes lost value, and millions of families saw their savings vanish overnight. The state kept chanting slogans of stability and resilience. But behind the curtain, the truth was undeniable. Factories shutting down, stores abandoned, and citizens slipping back into poverty. Independent reports now suggest up to 40% of China's workforce is unemployed or scraping by on temporary, unstable jobs. This is not just an economic slowdown, it is a social earthquake. Across China's biggest cities, the silence is deafening. Shuttered malls, half-built skyscrapers, train stations crowded with migrants escaping to foreign lands. On the streets, survival takes the form of street stalls, gig work, or sleeping rough under bridges. The propaganda machine can no longer mask the scale of collapse. The suffering is too widespread, too raw to ignore. The nation once praised as an unstoppable giant is staring at a future of decline and disintegration. And what happens next in China will not stay within its borders. It will ripple across the globe. In China's biggest cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, the cracks of decline are impossible to ignore. Glittering malls that once overflowed with shoppers now sit half-empty, storefronts boarded up, banners peeling in the sun. On side streets, crowds clutch resumes outside agencies that offer nothing. Job fairs have become scenes of chaos, thousands chasing a few low-wage jobs that vanish almost as quickly as they appear. The collapse weighs heaviest on China's youth. A generation raised to expect prosperity now calls itself the lost generation. College graduates send out hundreds of applications and get no reply. On social media, despair spills out. Stories of rejection, hopelessness, and wasted ambition. Many young people have chosen to lie flat, rejecting the endless grind, cutting expenses to the bare minimum, or retreating back to rural hometowns. It is quiet resistance born from shattered dreams. Migrant workers, once the engine of China's rise, face devastation too. In Guangdong and Zhejiang, factories shut down one after another, unable to compete with cheaper neighbors like Vietnam or survive collapsing foreign demand. Machines are stripped for scrap, and thousands of workers are sent back to villages that cannot sustain them. In construction, bankrupt developers vanish, leaving unpaid wages and half-finished towers as scars across the skyline. Workers, stranded at abandoned sites, beg for months of back pay that will never come. But the countryside offers no salvation. With farming unable to absorb the unemployed, poverty spreads. Families that relied on remittances from children in the cities now struggle to afford food, surviving on meager pensions. Returning migrants crowd into small homes, fueling tensions, arguments, and growing anger toward powerless officials. Meanwhile, homelessness grows more visible. Under bridges in Chengdu, at train stations in Wuhan, in alleys of Xi'an, makeshift shelters rise at night, only to be torn down by police the next morning. Among the homeless are not only the poor, but once-middle-class families ruined by failed housing projects, and factory workers who lost both jobs and employer housing. For those who can escape, leaving China has become the dream. Students and professionals pour into Singapore, Canada, and Australia. Wealthy families send children abroad with no plans of return. Others take dangerous smuggling routes into Southeast Asia or even toward the U.S. But the dream often collapses into another nightmare. Scams, trafficking, and forced labor in criminal compounds across Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Inside China, unrest brews beneath the surface. Fired workers protest unpaid wages, clashing with riot police outside government offices. Videos leak online, only to be censored within hours. Yet they circulate in private groups, fueling anger and fear. Official numbers claim unemployment of just 5% or 6%. But these figures exclude youth, migrants and millions who have stopped looking for work. Independent estimates suggest the true number is closer to 30.40%. On the streets, survival reshapes daily life. Street stalls selling cheap snacks and second-hand goods multiply. Apps offering gig work, delivering packages, walking dogs, tutoring, are flooded with applicants far beyond available jobs. Engineers, teachers, and former office workers now scrape by on part-time hustles. Others abandon city life completely, retreating to rural collectives or attempting subsistence farming. Outwardly, silence prevails. People avoid speaking openly, fearing punishment. But privately, despair spreads. Families whisper about sending children abroad. Neighbors quietly sell belongings. Communities brace for a darker tomorrow. This is more than just unemployment. It is a social unravelling.