E-MAIL
English.:China"s production of automobiles since the beginning of this year hit 10 million units today, making it the third country in the world to surpass the annual output mark of this level, xinhuanet.com reported.
The achievement was announced at a celebration jointly sponsored by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) and China Society of Automotive Engineering at FAW Group Corp. headquarters in Changchun, capital of northeast China"s Jilin province.
Only the United States and Japan have previously passed the annual production figure of 10 million, the CAAM said.
For the first nine months of the year, industry-wide vehicle sales in China rose 34% to 9.7 million, with passenger-car sales up 42% to 7.2 million units.
China"s auto sales should soar to 12.6 million units this year, up 35% from 2008, boosted by subsidies that the industry is lobbying Beijing to extend, a government researcher said recently.