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Powered by tax cuts and stimulus spending, China"s October auto sales soared 72 percent from a year earlier, outpacing U.S. sales for another month, according to data reported Monday.
Automakers sold a total of 1.2 million cars and trucks, the government-sanctioned China Association of Auto Manufacturers announced.
That was down from September"s 1.3 million but well ahead of the 838,000 vehicles sold in the United States in October. China"s sales this year rose to 10.9 million vehicles, compared with 8.6 million in the United States, according to Autodata Corp.
Global automakers are looking to China"s fast-growing market to drive sales amid slack demand elsewhere. Sales have been spurred by tax cuts and subsidies meant to help nurture China"s auto industry and encourage purchases of more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Beijing"s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus has helped to prop up spending on cars and other big-ticket items, and lifted economic growth in the latest quarter to 8.9 percent from a year earlier.
China, with 1.3 billion people, has long been expected to overtake the United States as the biggest vehicle market. But the U.S. slump has hastened that shift by depressing American sales while China surged ahead.
Automakers have seen strong growth in sales to first-time buyers in smaller Chinese cities as incomes outside the country"s prosperous east coast rise. In the populous countryside, the communist government is spending 5 billion yuan ($730 million) to subsidize purchases of light trucks and minivans.
Despite China"s growth, the October sales were far below the U.S. monthly record of 1.8 million vehicles in July 2005.