N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
China is dominating the international automotive market increasingly firmly. For the first time, the country exported more than a million cars in a single month. Almost one in two cars sold worldwide rolled of a Chinese assembly line.
For a long time, Japan and Europe, particularly Germany, dominated the global car export market. China barely mattered. In 1919, the country exported fewer than one million cars a year, while Japan managed to sell 5.4 million cars outside its own borders. Experts openly questioned whether the Chinese would ever be capable of producing cars that could match the quality of offerings from Western and Japanese brands.
The fact that China now passed the milestone of one million exported cars per month will fuel nervousness worldwide regarding the ever-growing industrial dominance of the Asean giant.
Until recently, the EU automotive industry was still considered a sector that could remain competitive in countries with high labour costs such as Germany and France. For decades, the sector provided tens of thousands of well-paid jobs there. It is no coincidence that, upon the release of record figures for Chinese car exports, Germany is in an uproar due to Volkswagen’s intention to cut 100.000 jobs and to close four major factories in the country.
