China monthly auto sales overtake US for 1st timeBy ELAINE...

China monthly auto sales overtake US for 1st time
By ELAINE KURTENBACH – 2 hours ago

SHANGHAI (AP) — China's monthly vehicle sales surpassed those in the United States for the first time in January, moving this country closer to becoming the world's biggest auto market, data released Tuesday showed.

With its growing middle class and vast potential as a consumer market, China is vital for global automakers such as General Motors, Volkswagen and Toyota as they count on demand here to offset weakness in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Some 735,000 vehicles were sold in China in January, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said. That surpassed the 656,976 units that consultant Autodata Corp. said were sold in the United States in the same month.

But China's ascent has been hastened by the dramatic plunge in the U.S. auto market, where sales tumbled 37 percent in January to a 26-year low.

China's domestic auto market also has cooled, but less dramatically. Sales here fell 14.4 percent from a monthly record 860,000 in January 2008.

Mike DiGiovanni, General Motors Corp.'s executive director of global market and industry analysis, said last week he expected Chinese auto sales could hit 10.7 million units in 2009, more than his estimate of 9.8 million unit sales in the U.S. this year. Autodata forecasts 2009 U.S. sales at 9.57 million.

In 2006, China overtook Japan to become the world's No. 2 vehicle market in annual sales. With 1.3 billion people, China's climb to the top spot is inevitable, industry experts say.

Still, if American car sales recover in coming months the U.S. could remain the world's largest market by annual sales.

China's biggest automakers are GM and Germany's Volkswagen AG but its own ambitious producers, such as Chery Automobile Co., are growing fast. General Motors says it sold a record 1.09 million vehicles in China, up 6 percent from 2008.

January sales in China were 0.8 percent below those in December and well below the 790,000 some analysts had anticipated.

To spur the slowing auto market here, the government has rolled out measures to help boost vehicle sales as part of a multibillion-dollar economic stimulus package while it also tries to promote cleaner, more energy-efficient engines.

The sales tax on cars with engines less than 1.6 liters has been cut by half to 5 percent through the end of the year. The government also is spending 5 billion yuan (about $730 million) on subsidies to farmers to replace three-wheeled vehicles or outdated trucks with small, 1.3-liter or less vehicles.

Another 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) is going into upgrading automakers' technology and developing alternative energy vehicles.

In 2008, China's auto sales grew 6.7 percent from the previous to 9.38 million units — the first time growth has fallen below 10 percent since 1999.

Trucks and buses make up a larger share of China's sales than those of the United States or Japan. Some observers say that makes direct comparisons misleading. But many rural Chinese use such commercial vehicles for everyday family use.