General Motors Corp (GM) said yesterday its China sales last month more than doubled from a year earlier amid tax cuts and incentives to help boost the industry.
GM and other automakers are looking to China’s fast-growing market to drive sales amid slack demand elsewhere.
China’s sales have surpassed those of the US for all but two months this year.
CHINA MARKET
GM and its Chinese joint-venture partners sold a total of 166,911 vehicles last month, more than double the year-earlier period, the company said.
It gave no figure for the same month of last year.
The company said it sold just under 1.5 million vehicles in the first 10 months of the year and as of yesterday had surpassed that level.
“This has been a year of records for GM in China,” GM China Group president Kevin Wale said in a statement.
FIRST-TIME BUYERS
GM and other automakers are looking to first-time buyers in smaller Chinese cities to help drive sales as incomes outside the country’s prosperous east coast rise.
Beijing has helped to boost auto sales with tax cuts and subsidies for drivers to shift to cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars.
Most of that aid has gone to Chinese makers of smaller cars, though foreign producers also see sales rising.
JOINT VENTURE
GM said last month’s sales by its flagship joint venture, Shanghai GM, rose 109.7 percent to 68,505 vehicles and the total for the first 10 months of the year was up 46.5 percent at 548,707 units.
SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile (上汽通用五菱汽車), GM’s mini-commercial vehicle joint venture, sold 89,416 vehicles last month, up 78.5 percent from the same month last year.
The total for the year to date was up 65.9 percent at 891,285 units.
GM’s two-month-old joint venture with truck maker FAW, FAW-GM Light Duty Commercial Vehicle Co Ltd (一汽通用輕型商用汽車), sold 8,687 vehicles last month.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last