China has seemingly left the coronavirus behind and the recovery in car sales is a testament to that. Since July, sales have grown in the upper single digits compared with the respective months in the year 2019, which has also been a slow year for car sales.
While the spring’s coronavirus outbreak affected the export of merchandise out of China and left manufacturers around the world scrambling for stock, the virus also affected the sale of goods imported into China. In the case of cars – almost 60 percent of which are from foreign brands – sales plummeted to their lowest point in February when they decreased by 78.5 percent year-over-year.
China is one of the biggest markets for Japanese and German cars and the biggest car market in the world in general.
This chart shows the year-on-year change in monthly car sales in China.
