China’s auto market is likely to shrink for the third consecutive year this year, the country’s top auto body said yesterday, with industry watchers hoping a sales recovery in lower-tier cities helps ease the pace of decline.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said it expects a 2 percent fall in vehicle sales.
That would compare with 8.2 percent last year when sales were pressured by new emission standards in a shrinking economy that was contending with tit-for-tat import tariffs with the US.
CAAM, affirming its forecast announced last month, also said taht auto sales declined for the 18th consecutive month last month.
Annual sales started falling in 2018, by 2.8 percent, halting a growth march that began in the 1990s.
“The negative effect of cutting purchase tax in 2015 to 2017 has disappeared, and car sales in lower-tier cities are expected to recover,” LMC Automotive Ltd senior analyst Alan Kang (康軍) said.
“The easing of trade tensions between China and the United States has also helped restore consumer confidence,” said Kang, who expects China’s vehicle sales to grow 0.05 percent this year.
Sales of new-energy vehicles last month sank 27.4 percent, resulting in an overall 4 percent decline last year.
China’s new-energy vehicle sales jumped 62 percent in 2018, but a subsidy cut hurt sales last year.
Global automakers have been cautious with their predictions after cutting production, shutting factories and firing staff last year.
Executives at automakers such as Geely Holding Group (吉利控股集團) and Ford Motor Co partner Chongqing Changan Automobile Co Ltd (重慶長安汽車) have said they expect fiercer competition to weed out weaker players.
Ford yesterday said that its China auto sales slumped more than one-quarter last year for its third year of decline.
However, the latest fall was slower than the 37 percent weathered in 2018, and the automaker said that it saw its market share stabilize in the high-to-premium segment.
It remained cautious about this year, echoing bearish comments on China’s market from General Motors Co.
“We expect the market downturn to continue in 2020, and anticipate ongoing headwinds in our China business,” GM China president Matt Tsien said last week as the US automaker reported a 15 percent drop in China sales for last year.
Volkswagen AG, whose sport-utility vehicles helped it report a smaller 1.1 percent year-on-year fall in sales in the first 11 months of last year, has said it expects China’s market to grow at a relatively slow pace for the next five years.
The bright spots have been Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co Ltd, as well as US electric-vehicle maker Tesla Inc, which started delivering Model 3 sedans from its US$2 billion Shanghai plant this month.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS