{ China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: 15 million private cars on chinese roads }

According to the China’s National Bureau of Statistics report – 2007 national economic and social development statistical communique – China’s total number of privately-owned vehicles increased 32.5% to 15.22 million. The communique points out that by the end of 2007, the total number of civilian vehicles reached 56.97 million (including 14.68 million three-wheel motor vehicles and low-speed vehicles): a growth of 14.3% over the previous year. Among them, 35.34 million are private cars: an increase of 20.8%. There are 19.58 million civilian cars, an increase of 26.7%, 15.22 million of which are private cars.

The executive vice president of the China Automobile Industry Association (CAAM), Dong Yang, pointed out that the structure of China’s residential consumption is shifting from mainly food and clothing to living and transportation. Many families still do not own a car. There is a demand for cars from Chinese consumers. In the future, China’s auto market will continue to maintain rapid development.

“They will continue to expand at double-digit rates in 2008,” he added.

In 2006, China overtook Japan to become the world’s second largest car market, trailing only the United States, with sales of7.2 million units, up 25.13 percent from a year earlier. The country was also the world’s third largest vehicle producer, after Japan and the United States.

Currently, vehicle ownership in China was 44 for every 1,000 people. This was compared with the world average of 120. The United States had 750 vehicles for every 1,000 people.

Dong said the domestic car market had huge potential as the country had 57 million motor vehicles by the end of last year. Among them were 21.5 million privately-owned cars, according to latest government figures.

“Motor vehicles will play an extraordinarily-important role in China’s consumer spending,” he said, as the economy maintained fast growth and the government tried to encourage people to spend money.

Total auto sales in China jumped to 7.95 million units in the first 11 months of 2007, up 23.2 percent from a year ago, according to CAAM data.

Vehicle sales in November alone rose 16.3 percent in comparison to the same period a year earlier to 800,900 units.

The China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: 15 million private cars on chinese roads by Itamar Medeiros, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.