China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: the world’s biggest automobile maker and market

In 2009, driven by the stimulus package for auto consumption by Chinese government, China’s auto sales increased by 18 percent and China became the world’s largest automobile producer with the world’s largest automobile market.

The major automobile making countries and auto giants released their performance for the first half of 2009. Out with China, Germany and Brazil, the auto production and sales in the US, Japan, France, Britain, Canada and Russia decreased heavily.

Since the second half of 2008, the global automobile market has been struggling with vehicle sales declining greatly. In the first half of 2009, global demand in the automobile market shrank by almost 18 percent.

The global financial crisis hit the US auto industry hard. Two of its three auto giants collapsed and restructured. In the first half of 2009, American automobile sales were down by 35.1 percent year-on-year. And China became the NO. 1 for automobile production and sales.

Japan’s car sales in the first half decreased by 21.5 percent. Sales in Britain, France, Canada and Spain in the first half were also in a double-digit slump. In Russia, sales of passenger cars plunged 49 percent year-on-year.

With the subsidy policy on trade-ins by the German government, German auto sales increased by 20.9 percent year-on-year. This means that Germany was the only developed country to have a growth in car sales in the first half of 2009.