Workers assemble new-energy vehicles (NEVs) at a plant in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to fill overseas orders on September 21, 2023. NEV exports totaled 727,000 units in the first eight months of 2023, up 110 percent year-on-year, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed. Photo: VCG

China's automotive industry reached a historical milestone in 2023, with record numbers of car production and sales, according to industry data on Thursday, paving the way for the country to potentially become the world's biggest car exporter. 

The momentous development in China's auto industry put on vivid display of not only the success of China's industrial upgrading, but also the country's vast potential for high-quality development going forward. It also offered a powerful rebuttal to narratives of "China economic collapsing" or "China peaking," which are prevalent in the Western world. 

In 2023, China's car output exceeded 30.16 million units, up 11.6 percent year-on-year, and total car sales during the year hit more than 30.09 million units, up 12 percent year-on-year, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

Both car output and sales hit record highs, according to the CAAM. Also crucially, China's total auto exports hit 4.91 million, up a whopping 58 percent year-on-year, the CAAM's data showed. 

With such robust figures, China is expected to become the world's biggest car exporter, a significant distinction that only took China 70 years or so to achieve, thanks to rapid growth over the past several years. 

"It took China 55 years to increase the number of Chinese automobile exports from 1 to 1 million. In 2021, it exceeded 2 million, and in 2023, it reached 4.91 million, approaching 5 million," Fu Bingfeng, executive vice president and secretary-general of the CAAM, was quoted as saying. 

Since its start in 1953, over the past 70 years, China's auto industry has achieved one milestone after another. In 1956, China's first domestically made Jiefang truck rolled of the production line, ending the long history of China not being able to make cars. Than in 2009, China's car output and sales both exceeded the 10-million mark for the first time, surpassing the US as the world's biggest car producer and seller, a title it has hold for 15 years.

Before 2023, Japan was the world's biggest auto exporter, but data during the year showed that China had overtook Japan to become the world's top car exporter. In the first 11 months of 2023, China's total auto exports reached 4.41 million units, up 58 percent year-on-year and outnumbering Japan's 3.99 million units. With an impressive number of 4.91 million in car exports for the full year, many are expecting that China will surpass that of Japan for the year.

In reaching this milestone, the rise of China's new-energy vehicle (NEV) industry played a decisive role. In 2023, China exported 1.203 million NEVs, up 77.6 percent year-on-year, according to the CAAM.

The rise of the NEV industry is a microcosm of the achievement in China's upgrade of its vast manufacturing industry, export sector and the domestic market - all crucial to China's high-quality development, experts said.

Global Times