Japanese Car is Losing Leading Role in Southern China

Japanese cars are no longer the leader in southern China, just as in other markets. There are few differences between Japanese cars and others. Although the sales in October of Japanese cars are satisfying, it is far from the time to celebrate. Diaoyu Island issue and losing market of southern China are still problems for Japanese cars. Mr. Jia, the chief analyst of the development of Chinese auto industry consulting company, told the reporter “Japanese cars no longer have superiority in market of southern China."

For a long time, southern China is the "headquarter" for Japanese cars. But after SVW had made strategy for southern China market, Japanese auto manufacturers would face more threat. Mr. Jia said, Japanese auto manufactures attach great importance to southern China market. 3 Japanese auto groups have factories in this market. From the year 2008, SVW, whose main market is northern China, had made strategy for southern China and built a factory in the city of Foshan. Obviously, Guangdong province is the core of SVW's strategy. And the Toyota recall in 2010 gave a great opportunity to other auto manufacturers to take over the market of southern China. In the year 2010, Toyota had recalled over 8 million cars, SVW built 2 factories in Nanhai and Yizheng and Audi Q5, Tiguan and other new models of SVW had entered into the market. BAIC also invest 5 billion to build new factory in Guangdong province. According to the data from CAAM, the portion of German, Japanese, American, Korean are 25.37%, 17.42%, 15.96%, 9.78% till October of this year. The fact is Japanese cars are losing market of China. Although Japanese cars behave well in October, many insiders of auto industry don't believe Japanese cars could show year-on-year growth any more.

There is another problem for Japanese cars. Mr. Jia said, "Because the restriction in Guangzhou, the whole market is becoming more high-end. The customers will choose luxury brand when changing their cars. It is much more difficult for Japanese cars to compete with other luxury brands."