VW car in a parking lot in Beijing: After the Corona slump, sales have been above the previous year for three months in a row.
Photo: GREG BAKER / AFPCar sales are booming in China: According to the CPCA (China Passenger Car Association), 1.63 million cars were sold in July. That is an increase of almost eight percent compared to the previous year. This is the highest increase since sales fell by almost 80 percent in February due to the corona-related restrictions. In May and June, too, sales figures were up on the previous year.
This is good news for German companies like Volkswagen, BMW or Daimler. The Chinese car market is of immense importance to them. In July, more than every fourth new car sold was a German make, as CPCA announced. The share was around 27 percent. The share of luxury sedans, a domain of German manufacturers in China, was therefore over 30 percent.
"China is the automotive industry's great hope," Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of the Duisburg CAR Center Automotive Research, recently told SPIEGEL. "America is sinking into chaos, there are always corona relapses in Europe. But China's economy comes out of the crisis the quickest. It will take another big leap forward in the next few years."
Last week the manufacturers' association CAAM (China Association of Automobile Manufacturers) reported positive figures: According to this, sales of cars and commercial vehicles from manufacturers to dealers rose by almost 15 percent year-on-year to 2.1 million vehicles.
Icon: The mirrorhej / dpa / AFP