China’s auto export up 25.8% year on year in 2017

In 2017, China exported around 891 thousand vehicles with a year-on-year growth of 25.8%. Some 639 thousand PVs were exported last year, increasing 34% from a year earlier and the export volume of CVs decreased 8.9% year on year to around 252 thousand units, according to the China Association of Automoblie Manufacturers (CAAM). This is the first positive return after 4 consecutive years of annual export volume decreases.

According to CAAM, from 2009 to 2012, China's auto export volume increased year by year. In 2012, this number had exceeded 1 million units for the first time. However, after 2012, China's annual auto export quantity had suffered year-by-year decreases. Especially, the national auto export decrease reached 20.1% in 2015.

Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), pointed out that the export to Iran, U.S., Mexico and Brazil witnessed obvious increases last year. Particularly, the shares of export volume to North America saw a considerable increase in total annual exports which was from 1.9% in 2014 to 12% in 2017.

Thanks to the global economic recovery, consumer demands in some countries like Brazil and Russia were growing in vehicle consumption. This is also a factor that stimulated China to export more vehicles.

Besides, China's “One Belt, One Road” initiative had brought a lot of preferential policies to those auto exporters. From statistics, in the first 8 months, the cumulative auto export volume to those countries along the route of “One Belt, One Road” accounted for 60.88% of total export sales.

Meanwhile, the export performance of new energy vehicles (NEV) was another highlight. According to the data released by China's custom, China had already exported around 93.1 thousand NEVs in the first 11 months last year.