Yeah, it was both. The european brands avoided electric cars for a long time, while the chinese pushed hard for them. And because electric motors and car batteries were a new technology, this was a great opportunity for the chinese to pull ahead(everyone started from 0).
And the chinese also used their cooperations and acquisitions(Volvo and Lotus are owned by the chinese brand Geely), in order to improve the conventional car making part production(everything other than the electric engine and batteries). Tesla followed a similar arc. Their motors/batteries are great, the other parts started as bad but they are improving all the time.