General Motors Corp, which has invested US$1.5 billion in four factories in China, said it's only a matter of time before it has to increase capacity in the world's fastest growing vehicle market.
General Motors is forecasting the Chinese automobile market will expand to 4.4 million units this year, a 29 percent rise from last year. Shanghai General Motors Co., founded in 1997, makes Buick Sail, Regal and Excelle passenger cars and the Buick GL8 van.
Analysts such as Mei Luwu at Penghua Fund Management in Shenzhen say the factory can't produce enough to meet demand.
"Well before the end of this decade China will surpass Japan and become the second-largest automotive market in the world," Frederick Henderson, General Motors' president for Asia-Pacific, said in an interview in Bangkok. The company's flagship Shanghai factory recently started a third shift and new capacity in China is "not a question of if, simply a question of when," he said.
General Motors and its rivals Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Toyota Motor Corp, are expanding production in China to meet rising demand from increasingly wealthy Chinese urban residents at a time markets elsewhere are slumping. Car sales may drop 4.3 percent in Western Europe and fall 3 percent in North America, according to London-based World Markets Research Center.
Shanghai GM sold 133,000 units in the first nine months of the year, 62 percent more than a year earlier. General Motors sold 267,395 vehicles in the first nine months of this year among all its China ventures, nearly 38 percent more than last year.
Henderson declined to say if General Motors would add new capacity in China by setting up new joint ventures, or by adding new production lines in existing plants.
Elsewhere in Asia, General Motors doesn't see any immediate need to build new factories, except in India, said Henderson, who is attending a meeting of business leaders from the 21-country APEC forum in the Thai capital.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)