Business
        

Cars

Car sales in smaller cities to drive growth

Updated: 2011-04-19 13:14

By Fang Yan and Helen Massy-Beresford (China Daily)

Twitter Facebook Myspace Yahoo! Linkedin Mixx

SHANGHAI - China's car sales are expected to continue their upward trajectory in the coming years through a combination of organic demand, "indigenous brands" built with foreign joint-venture partners and increased ownership by drivers in smaller towns and cities.

Vehicle sales are expected to rise to 23 million units by 2015, up 27 percent from 2010, a senior Chinese government official said on Monday in Shanghai, just ahead of the official opening of the Shanghai Auto Show.

That figure suggests a slowing growth rate because it is lower than the 32.4 percent rate in 2010, when China's sales totaled 18.1 million units. Car sales alone rose one-third last year to 13.8 million units.

Those sales secured the country's position as the world's biggest auto market for the second consecutive year.

Su Bo, vice-minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, disclosed the forecast at a seminar being held ahead of the Shanghai Auto Show, which opens to the news media on Tuesday and to the public on Thursday.

Reuters

E-paper

Head on

Chinese household care goods producers eye big cities, once stronghold of multinational players

Carving out a spot
Back onto center stage 
The Chinese recipe

European Edition

Specials

British Royal Wedding

Full coverage of the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in London. Best wishes

The final frontier

Xinjiang is a mysterious land of extremes that never falls to fascinate.

Bridging the gap

Tsinghua University attracts a cohort of foreign students wanting to come to China.

25 years after Chernobyl
Luxury car show
Peking Opera revival