Chinese Auto Exports Get Their Wheels Turning in 2011

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Chinese automotive exports have been long threatened but have not materialized, Western automotive media have been issuing ‘The Chinese are Coming!!’ headlines since 2003, but barely any Chinese cars have made it to Western roads in that time – aside from the London taxi, which ironically is now majority made in Shanghai and shipped to the UK for assembly, making it one of the first Chinese cars to hit Western roads in large numbers, the MG6 came in 2011 and threatened to sell 2000 cars in its first year but until now sales remain way below their initial sales targets. However, Western auto makerts are not exactly boom town targets for Chinese car manufacturers, they are more of a bragging right to other manufacturers in China to show that they have the ability to design, develop and sell cars that meet EU standards. The real growth market for Chinese cars are other developing markets, north, west, east, south Africa have been major targets, as have Middle Eastern ones but South America, particularly Brazil, are major targets. 2009 was a terrible year for automotive exports, the world was mired in a recession and only the Chinese market was seeing any sort of growth, thus exports were practically 50% lower than 2008’s figures, fast forward to the end of 2011 and export sales had practically trebled.

Chery was a major catalyst behind 2011’s export sales, the Anhui based company exported some 160,200 cars from its factories and saw export sales increase of 73%. Great Wall came in second with export sales reaching 160,200 units which saw export sales increase 50%. JAC saw the biggest sales increase of all Chinese auto companies, 2010’s export sales figures were just 21,600, by the end of 2011 these had grown to 66,300 units.

In 2010, China’s major export markets were Algeria, Vietnam, Egypt, Syria and Chile, by the end of 2011 a major change had occurred. With Algeria on the tail end of a people’s revolution and Syria being swept up in a similar people’s revolution, Brazil became a major precipitant of Chinese automotive products with 104,000 Chinese cars being sold in South America’s most populous nation. Chinese automotive analysts are saying that 2011 will be the automotive industries ‘Great Leap Forward’ in terms of a stronger focus on export sales to offset weaker internal markets.