Transparency

Methodology and Transparency

How this site collects, writes, checks, publishes and corrects.

Who we are, and who this is for

TopChinaCar is an industry information site for international readers who follow China's auto industry. We write about the companies, the people, the sales and the overseas business, using the public record.

The collection stage watches 238 sources. The current list is on the sources page. The rules for what we will and will not claim are in the editorial policy.

Business flow

A piece moves through six stages. The words on the arrows are the action between stages. After a correction is accepted, it is written back to the related pages.

Business flow: source collection, hand off to AI, AI screening and writing, send to checks, programmatic checks, publish if it passes, publishing to the daily email and the website, readers send tips or corrections, reader tips and corrections, revise after a check, revision, then update the related pages.

Technical architecture

The website, the daily briefing service, the scheduled writing jobs, the models and the email each run on a public service named below.

Technical architecture: GitHub Actions runs scheduled jobs and drafting, then AI writing uses Claude, with DeepSeek and Tencent CodeBuddy cross-review as the alternative. The draft is saved to Cloudflare Workers and D1, the daily briefing service and database. Resend sends the email. Cloudflare Pages serves the website.

How each section is produced

Frequency is how often a section is refreshed. Human check means whether a person has to approve it before it goes live.

Briefings

How it is made
AI writes each briefing, including the China market daily and the overseas daily. A program checks the draft, then it publishes automatically.
Updates
Every day
Human check
No editor confirmation. It publishes when the checks pass.

People Intel

How it is made
Items are extracted from announcements and published automatically, with the original source attached.
Updates
When a public announcement appears
Human check
Automatic. No item waits for an editor to click publish.

Organization readings

How it is made
AI writes the reading. A second model checks each claim against its source. It then publishes automatically.
Updates
When a new reading passes the source check
Human check
Automatic after that source check. The editor does not approve each one.

Contested readings

How it is made
AI may draft it. It is published only after the editor confirms it.
Updates
Only after the editor confirms
Human check
The editor must confirm it. It never publishes on its own.

Sales and rankings

How it is made
Figures come from company announcements and public CPCA data. A program calculates the rankings. A period with no public figure is shown as no data, not as zero.
Updates
Every month
Human check
The program publishes the calculated rankings. A person does not rewrite each rank by hand.

Sources

How it is made
A list of the sources in use: RSS, Google News, exchange filings, WeChat accounts, and public LinkedIn posts found through Tavily search.
Updates
Every week
Human check
Refreshed from the source pool. Entries are not rewritten by hand into articles.

How we use AI

Daily briefings, organization readings and contested readings are written by AI. Those pages are labeled AI-generated. People-intel items are extracted from announcements and keep a link to the original text. Sales rankings are calculated by a program from public figures, and the page names the data and the basis.

AI can be wrong. Please check names, titles, dates and figures against the original source. Corrections are welcome.

Corrections

To ask for a correction, open the tip form for a correction. Say what is wrong, what the public record says, and include the source link. We reply within 48 hours, the same commitment as the editorial policy.

Once a correction is confirmed, it is applied on every related page, so the same fact is not left stale in a second place. The page keeps a note that it was corrected.

Editorial principles

Public sources only

A factual sentence needs a public source a reader can open. We do not fill a gap with a made-up figure.

No rumors, factions or private lives

We do not publish rumors, factional claims or details of private life.

Inference sits apart from fact

A conclusion we draw is labeled as inference, separate from the sourced facts. A contested reading stays unpublished until the editor confirms it.

Related pages