By Zhang Xue

China's auto market in 2009 begins with the monthly output and sales volume of 658,800 and 735,500 sets respectively, and ended with 1.5247 million sets and 1.4136 million sets respectively. And the aggregated auto output and sales volume in the whole year is 13.791 million sets and 13.6448 million sets with the respective year-on-year growth rate of 48 percent and 46 percent. Such a rapid growth is really out of people's expectation.

Many interesting phenomena have been seen in China's auto market in 2009: lots of automakers lowered their targets on output and sales volume firstly, while then worked overtime for manufacture and increased the sales target again and again; and dealers were worried about the inventory pressure initially, then they turned to being anxious about the scarce auto source. On the contrary, consumers have always been maintaining strong enthusiasm on consuming.

On January 11, 2010, China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) released the data about the output and sales volume in the whole year of 2009. Such a performance sheet can help us review China's auto market in 2009 from the angle of figures.

It is never too extravagant to describe the auto market in 2009 with the phrase of "singing loudly along the way". The record of data about the monthly output and sales volume has been refreshed continuously, and the aggregated output and sales volume finally stopped at 13.791 million sets and 13.6448 million sets respectively. Among them, the output and sales volume of passenger cars reached 10.3838 million sets and 10.3313 million sets with the respective year-on-year growth rate of 54 percent and 53 percent.

Compared with passenger cars, commercial autos are impacted more by the international financial crisis, the output and sales volume of them decreased persistently in the second half of 2008. However, driven by the government's investment and promoted by such policies as "autos going to the countryside", the commercial auto market began to recover in the first half of 2009 and showed growth momentum gradually. In 2009, the final output and sales volume of commercial autos was 3.4072 million sets and 3.3135 million sets with the year-on-year growth rate of 33 percent and 28 percent respectively.

Besides the growth on the quantity of the production and sale, the steady improvement of the economic benefit in auto industry has reflected the positive momentum of China's auto industry in another angle. According to the newsletter on main economic indexes of the 13,947 above-scale enterprises in the auto industry of China collected by CAAM, from January to November, the aggregated prime operating revenue of the above-scale enterprises in the auto industry of China was RMB2.805433 trillion yuan, up 21 percent year on year; the aggregated total profits of the above-scale enterprises in the auto industry of China were RMB198.827 billion yuan, up 52 percent year on year; the aggregated total pretax profits were RMB330.9 billion yuan, up 45 percent year on year.

CAAM reckoned that, "The stable development of China's economy and the political factors are the main driving force for the rapid growth of auto output and sales volume." In 2009, China's macro-economy has kept a favorable development momentum, the urbanization has been boosted stably, and residents' livelihood has been improved rapidly, these have provided guarantee for the development of China's auto industry. What's more, since the beginning of 2009, such favorable policies as reforming the tax on fuel oil, halving the tax on auto purchase, autos going to the countryside and old for new of autos have been issued. Such a density is unprecedented, and has powerfully stimulated the rapid recovery of domestic auto market and a rapid development momentum has taken on.

In the performance sheet of 2009, there are two groups of figures delighting people very much.

"From January to September of 2009, the auto sales volume in second-and-third-tier cities increased 41 percent and 51 percent respectively, while in first-tier cities the volume increased 34 percent. Viewing from the contribution degree to sales growth, from January to September of 2009, the contribution degree of autos in second-and-third-tier cities was 40 percent and 34 percent respectively while the one in first-tier cities was 26 percent. " It illustrates that the potential demand on buying autos in China's second-and-third-tier cities is releasing effectively. With the growth of auto population in first-tier cities, great expectations are paid in second-and-third-tier cities, which have become and will continue to be the main impetus for the growth of China's auto market.

Additionally, in accordance with CAAM's statistics on the variety of newly launched passenger cars in 2009 (including improved and newly developed auto types), compared with the previous years, in 2009, the highest historical record on launching new autos has been hit with 221 auto types (about 327 varieties), 114 types more than that of 2008, and the car held the highest type number to 175, 75 types more than that of last year. Viewing from the nationality, self-owned brands have launched new autos with the most quantity, reaching 120 types and 83 types more than that of last year. It indicates that the competition among manufacturers becomes fierce while selectable autos for consumers are more.

Apart from the growth on quantity, CAAM believes that a certain achievement has also been made in the structural adjustment of China's auto industry. It has been embodied in such aspects as very fast improvement of market shares of the autos with low emission volume, stable boost of merger and reorganization of enterprises and a great increase of self-owned brands' occupation rate. In 2009, the total sales volume of China's passenger cars with self-owned brands was 4.577 million sets, occupying 44 percent of the total sales volume of passenger cars and increasing 4 percentage points than that of last year. This has also illustrates that the self-owned brands are being recognized by consumers increasingly.

In 2009, China's auto market was called a supernatural flower in the winter of the global auto industry. The output and sales volume in the whole year reached 13.791 million sets and 13.6448 million sets, such an achievement made China's auto output and sales volume leap to the No.1 in the world for the first time. In the new year, the self-owned brands are expected to have more splendid performance.