Can China's growing car market maintain momentum?

With the world’s economies in turmoil, China’s star continues to rise. Indeed, China has remained the only one of the world’s major economies that continued to show growth through the global recession of 2008-09. In this extract from a just-auto research report looking at the Chinese auto industry and its prospects, Mark Bursa considers the causes of continued - and seemingly inexorable - market growth.

RESEARCH ANALYSIS: China's recession-defying automotive market

11 March 2010

CHINA: Car market surges 55% in February

9 March 2010

China's car market continued to boom in February according to official data.

CHINA: Domestics to give Japanese more competition

8 March 2010

Japanese carmakers are likely to face difficulties in maintaining their current share of the Chinese market, which has become the world's largest, a senior official at China's auto industry group said on Monday.

CHINA: SAIC sees 2010 growth much lower

8 March 2010

SAIC Motor Corp expects sales to increase over 10% this year, sharply lower than its 2009 growth as the Chinese market slows.

China automotive market – forecasts to 2016

9 February 2010

With the world’s economies in turmoil, China’s star continues to rise, but it has certainly not been immune from the global crisis - in 2008, car sales growth in China slowed to a single-digit rate for the first time since the turn of the century. It has only taken some government sales incentives to kick the growth curve sharply upwards in the latter half of 2009. As a result, China ended the year as the world’s largest car market, ahead of the US – several years ahead of when most analysts predicted this would happen.