China In September 2012: Down, And The Japanese Are To Blame
Vehicle sales in China were down 1.75 percent compared to the same month last year, says the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). An official of the CAAM blamed it on the Japanese.
Vehicle sales in were down in September mostly due to a slump in sales of Japanese cars amid a heated diplomatic row between the two countries,” Chen Shihua, director of the information department of the association told Reuters in Beijing. Of course, there also are a slowing economy and rising fuel costs, but the downward pressure comes from the island spat, Chen said.
In September, 1,617,400 units changed hands in China, down 1.75 percent year-on-year. 1,315,600 passenger vehicles were sold, down 0.30 percent. Sales of commercial vehicles were down 7.59 percent.
January-September, sales of all vehicles are up 3.37 percent to 14,131,200. Passenger car sales stand at 11,269,600 units, up 6.94 percent. Commercial vehicle sales reached 2,822,700, down 8.82 percent for the first nine months of the year.
All in all, passenger vehicles are alive and well, commercial vehicles continue to be a source of concern. More than half of GM’s China business is in cheap delivery vans. While GM, up only 1.7 percent in September, could not profit from the communal misery of the Japanese brands, and watched the Germans run away with the loot, Ford’s sales for the month of September rose 35 percent to 59,570 vehicles, says Bloomberg.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Am I missing something? How is kicking the doors and fenders of a Japanese manufactured car going to solve anything? If this is to show support for China’s land claim, there are more civilized ways to do so. This is ghetto logic. WTF.
...short term thinking prevailing in China. The mindless hordes will start bashing Hyundais after they look at a map of China from 1870. Korea was occupied by China and later became a vassal state.
"short term thinking prevailing in China. " I remember something about Bob Lutz being happy that China was producing so many MBA's. Want to bet this has something to do with it? Regardless, living here, I'm not surprised that the Germans are running away with the sales that are lost from the Japanese cars. American cars are just perceived to be not as well engineered. And people buying Japanese here do so because they want that reliability. The German vehicles are seen by your average Chinese to be of higher quality than American vehicles. so to me, this makes perfect sense.