#ChinaPassengerCarAssociation

Chinese auto sales grew 4.4 percent last month vs a year earlier, rising to 2.07 million vehicles, according to tabulations released by the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on Monday. This is actually better than its preliminary assessment suggested, with the new figure helping put an end to a 21-month slump of declining automotive sales.

Unfortunately for the region, it doesn’t seem to be indicative of a full recovery. In its report, CAAM noted that the rebound may be only temporary. Last month’s figures were primarily elevated by commercial vehicles, which saw record growth at 32 percent (year over year). Passenger vehicles also saw their numbers improve from the month prior, but they still down 2.6 percent in April. The improvement is widely seen as the result of backlogged orders that couldn’t be completed during the most prohibitive period of the pandemic, as well as the Chinese Communist Party ordering more work vehicles to stimulate the economy.

Last week, we looked at how the world’s largest automotive markets are coping. If you’re interested in an abridged version, they could all be doing better. We also noted that China was getting around to summarizing its summer sales data. Well, that ship has since come in, and it was full of corpses. The country has endured three straight months of falling car sales after years of consistent growth.

As the world’s largest automotive market, China impacts just about every other industrialized nation on the planet. Unfortunately, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) reported that influence helped the market share of U.S. brands fall to 10.7 percent in the first eight months of 2018 versus 12.2 percent just one year earlier. The association’s assistant secretary general, Xu Haidong, said this decline could be attributed to American firms inability to refresh their lineups in a timely manner and definitely had nothing to do with the trade war, anti-American sentiments, or the boycotting of U.S. brands by Chinese consumers.