The statistics from the China Automotive Industry Association (CAIA) prove that China's auto market continued to maintain a stable and fast growth last year, with the total output hitting 5.707 million units and homemade auto sales reaching 5.7582 million units, a growth of 12.55 and 13.54 percent respectively year on year.

If adding the auto imports of about 160,000 units in the year, China's auto sales were close to 5.92 million units, surpassing Japan's local sales of 5.8 million to rank the second in the world, only next to the United States, People's Daily reported on Friday.

Undergoing China's domestic auto market growth downturn in 2004, China's auto market maintained a fast growth under the fierce competition of the global market in 2005. Statistics show that 3.9307 million homemade passenger vehicles were produced and 3.9711 million sold, a surge of 19.7 and 21.4 percent over the 15.17 percent growth of 2004.

During the 10th Five-year Guidelines (2001-2005) period, China achieved a high-speed growth in its auto market. The vehicle consumption went up approximately to 5.92 million units in 2005 from 2.731 million units in 2001. The proportion of China's auto market was up to 8.7 percent of the world's market sales in 2005 from 4.3 percent in 2001, said Xu Changming, director of Information Resources Department under the State Information Center.

In 2005, China's auto market growth accounted for 23.2 percent of the total global growth. The evident improvement of China's auto market has become an integral and important component of the world's auto market.

Xu Changming believes that the high-speed growth of the passenger vehicles last year benefited mainly from the launch of second- and third regional markets. In 2005, the auto sales in the second regional market in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Guangdong were up by about 40 percent while the sales in the third regional market of Hebei, Henan, Liaoning, Sichuan, Fujian, Guanxi, Shanxi, Yunnan and Tianjin exceeded a 50 percent growth. The rise of these markets mark the outstanding improvement of the sustainable development capability for China's auto market.

In addition, the competitive advantages of homemade vehicles, especially Chinese brand autos, were boosted. Statistics show the auto sales by domestic producers with self-developed brands increased by 40.3 percent in the first 11 months of last year, nearly twice the sales growth of 21.3 percent by Sino-foreign joint ventures. Of them, the sales of Chery autos were close to 190,000 units, ranking the sixth among the sedan makers in the country, an increase of over 110 percent.

Nevertheless, influenced by the business cycle, oil price hike and policy factors, the slight negative growth for commercial vehicles appeared. China's auto market is driven solely by passenger cars now, instead of by "duoservo forces" of passenger and commercial vehicles. Statistics show the commercial vehicle sales were 1.787 million units in 2005, down 0.75 percent year on year.

The CAIA expects that the auto market will still maintain a 10 to 15 per cent growth with the year's auto sales reaching between 6.4 and 6.6 million units in 2006.

(People's Daily January 16, 2006)