China’s auto sales up 4% to 1.72mn in Aug

 Visitors view Volkswagen cars during an auto show in Changsha city, Hunan province. China’s auto sales reached 1.72mn vehicles in August, a rise of just 4% compared with the same month a year ago, an industry group said.

AFP/Beijing

China’s auto sales reached 1.72mn vehicles in August, a rise of just 4% compared with the same month a year ago, an industry group said.

In July sales had climbed 6.7% year-on-year to 1.62mn vehicles, previous figures showed.

For the first eight months of the year, the country’s auto sales rose 7.7% to 15.02mn vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a statement on Friday.

China is critically important to foreign car manufacturers, which dominate the market, given massive demand from a growing middle class and weaker sales in other parts of the world such as Europe.

But the recent fining of several foreign auto firms for allegedly making use of a dominant market position to control prices, deemed to be in violation of China’s anti-monopoly law, has taken some of the shine off its appeal.

Authorities on Thursday fined an affiliate of German automaker Volkswagen more than $40mn for price-fixing for cars and repair services in the central province of Hubei, according to a statement. Separately, the government fined Chrysler of the US – which has merged with Italy’s Fiat – over $5mn for recommending prices to dealers in Shanghai, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Still, foreign companies continue to record healthy sales.  

US auto giant General Motors set a new record for August as its China sales surged 14% year-on-year to 280,178 vehicles, the company said.

Competitor Ford sold 77,506 vehicles, up 9.0% from the same month last year.  Full-year auto sales in China reached 21.98mn vehicles last year, when a recovery in Japanese brands offset the impact of slowing economic growth.