In 2009, China's auto industry has entered a new round of rapid growth period. The robust consumption demand has made China's auto market welcome a "blowout" situation, that is, the output and sales volume of 13.791 million sets and 13.6448 million sets has taken the lead in the global auto market. With the formation of the largest auto consumer market, China's auto industry has become an important part of the global auto industry, and the capacity of auto export will also become an important index to measure the development of China's auto industry.

During the six years from 2001 to 2007, the export of China's autos and components and parts has witnessed a rapid development with the averagely annual growth rate of nearly 50 percent. Since the beginning of 2008, the situation of auto export turned to be serious with great slide. In 2009, especially since the beginning of the second half of 2009, the export has shown recovery evidence but still at a low point.

Under the current situation, the development mode on auto product export is urgent to be changed. We need to reshape the foundation of export development, improve the growth benefit and quality of export and boost China to become a big country of exporting auto product, then a power of export.

The scale of China's auto export is small with low market share in the international export market, which indicates that the international competitive strength of China's auto industry is not enough. Viewing from the export scale, auto products fall into the first major category in the international trade of goods, occupying 10 percent with large trading space and multiple demand levels; but the proportion of the export volume of China's auto products has not reached 2 percent in the total volume of global export, not reached 6 percent of domestic auto sales revenue, and only occupied 1.4 percent of domestic export volume, the data which implies a gap but also an opportunity. It indicates that autos will be the most promising products in China's export.

Zhang Ji, Director of Department of Mechanic, Electronic and Hi-tech Industry, Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), believed that currently, China's entire auto export market is mainly oriented to developing countries. Viewing from the data of the first eleven months of 2009, the Asian countries (mainly refers to East Union and West Asia) occupied 39.7 percent, Africa 31.5 percent, Latin America 12.4 percent, East Europe's Russia and Ukraine about 4 percent, and there are also a few products exporting to such developed countries as Europe Union and North America. The exported products are mainly medium-and-low-grade cars, passenger cars and vans and aim at developing countries. The auto component export market is mainly oriented to developed countries. The export volume of the top five markets has occupied 50.8 percent of the entire export volume. The exported products mainly involve such resource and labor intensive products as tires, wheel spiders, electron beam and slewing journal, which are mainly oriented to the low-end market in developed countries, for example, the after sale market. The OEM assorted proportion is less than 30 percent.

Zhang Ji pointed out that the current export structure is consistent with the current development feature no matter in terms of product structure, market structure or the structure of trade modes. The export of China's auto products starts late, but through the expansion on segment markets, the exported products fall into the low end but never inferior, and are provided with good performance-and-price ratio, thereby, the export has witnessed a rapid growth shortly, which has laid a favorable and solid foundation for the further development of the export of China's auto products. Meanwhile, what shall be recognized further is that under the status quo, it's urgent to change the development mode of exporting auto products.

The rapid growth on export that has kept for several successive years indicates that China's autos are demanded greatly in the international market and have obvious comparative advantage, however, the export manner is extensive and has not yet formed direct competition with internationally famous entire auto enterprises and therefore, such a manner is only the internationalization of domestic competition to a large extent. The competition stress is mainly sourced from the interior, many deep-rooted problems have been revealed, and the foundation of China's auto export is not firm. For example, the low-level homogeneous competition mainly relies on price without paying attention to the quality, before-sale service, after service and the construction of marketing network, additionally, the brand and credit are also insufficient; enterprises are weak on strategic planning for export markets, taking orders as the market, and even some of them take the market as a trial place, representing serious short-term behaviors. To realize persistent growth on auto export, what must be done is to change such an extensive export manner increasingly, rebuild the foundation of export, and boost the transformation of export enterprises from workshop or factory type to marketing type.

Zhang Ji expressed that under the circumstance of extensive export operation, some enterprises have very small export volume that they have not to invest more on after service and product development, so the price of their products are very cheap; but for good enterprises, because they have investment on developing products, provide after service and conduct network construction and brand cultivation, the cost of their products is bound to be lifted. Therefore, against such a background, such a phenomenon will emerge, that is, it's difficult for small enterprises to become big and for big enterprises to become strong. Due to the generally insufficient brand recognition, as long as there is a problem exposed to a product, the problem will influence the overall honor of China's auto industry and Made-in-China products.

Therefore, in the end of 2006, the MOFCOM gathered with related departments and issued measures on regulating the order of auto export, and the effect was remarkable. Currently, the number of main operating bodies of China's auto export has decreased from 1400-odd to 700-odd, the unit price of exported autos has been increased greatly and the profits of enterprises have been improved remarkably.