Car Culture Captivates China: Sales Boom Along With Potential Problems

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38899-2004Mar7.html

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She drives her son to school and herself to the high-rise office where she conducts real estate deals. She takes weekend outings to shopping malls on the fringes of town, and meets friends at the Starbucks coffee shop near the villa she is renovating in a gated community in the suburbs. She likes the feel of eyes upon her as she rolls along, past the mélange of images defining China's most cosmopolitan city -- half-built housing developments, boutiques selling European furniture and dumpling stands where construction workers eat for $1.

"It's a very confident feeling," she said. "Of course, I wanted the best type of car. People always want the best."

From foreign luxury cars to the Chinese-made Geely, which retails for about $4,000, the automobile has captivated China, gaining traction among people of increasingly wide incomes and backgrounds, with global implications for industry, the environment and energy.

More than 2 million passenger cars were sold in China last year, an increase of more than 80 percent from the year before, according to the State Information Center. China is now the single fastest-growing auto market in the world, and the second largest in Asia after Japan.

"Every year, we keep saying, 'Well, there's no way we can have a repeat performance of last year,' and every year we're wrong," said Phil Murtagh, who oversees General Motors Corp.'s operations in China. "We're seeing the beginnings of a car culture."

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At the current rate of growth, car registration in China is expected to surpass Japan's 60 million vehicles sometime in the next decade.

China already has huge traffic problems, and I believe they auction off limited numbers of auto registrations each year... granted, in China, just about anything can be had for a price

Just wait until you see the shape of the petroleum consumption curve once China gets 'automotized'.

To add to that, now that Indian tech workers have a much better job market, I'd expect to see about half of it's 100 million scooters upgraded to cars.

It was inevitable, but we did nothing. Soon, soon we will pay -- you'll see.

gearing up to participate in american style consumption. YIKES!

Makes me want to go for a hike.