Today’s International New York Times front page headline read “Auto brands from abroad embraced in China”. The article goes on to say that “Multinational corporations are steadily clawing market share from Chinese brand in their home market” and that since 2000, the share of Chinese brands has dropped from north of 60% to 45% in 2013.
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Without doubt the share of Chinese brands in the China auto market has declined. The spin the article gives is that Chinese consumers are abandoning Chinese automotive brands in favor of international brands because of poor quality and the like. This is inappropriate and inaccurate.

What the article fails to point out is that all this has happened in an exploding Chinese car market. In 2000, the Chinese auto industry produced 2 million vehicles. That number today has risen to 22 million, an 11 fold increase. Since 2010 China has been the world’s largest single country auto market and it will surpass both North America as a whole and Europe by 2010 according to a McKinsey and Company report. Chinese brands thus accounted for some 1.2 million vehicles in 2000 and today account for 10 million! An 8 fold increase in volume sales in 14 years is not shabby and in no shape or form suggests that Chinese consumers are not buying Chinese cars.

With such explosive growth it is only to be expected that new entrants will come and they will take a share of the growing pie. There is no industry anywhere in the world where this does not happen. So to give it the spin that Chinese automakers are on their way out, which is the flavor of the article is simply misleading and is perhaps geared to sell the paper rather than inform readers. I was disappointed.