PERSPECTIVES ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE AUTOMOBILE ...

Automotive Industry in China
4. Methodology
Our main objective is to gather information about and analyze the situation of the
passenger cars market. However, we will also overview the situation of the
automobile in general.
The first phase has consisted on gathering information from secondary research about
macroeconomic data. Our main sources of information have been:
China Development Review (CDR)
China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM)
Fourin: Research and Analysis of the Asian Automotive Industry
CEIC database
InterChina Analysis
China Commerce Yearbooks
China Main Customs Administration.
In China, it is not easy to have access to reliable sources of information. The
databases and national statistics sometimes are far away from the reality. Often we
may get the same information from different sources and it is difficult to know which
source is more reliable. Knowing this, we have compared the information provided by
several sources to see how big could be the deviation. In some cases, we have found
that the differences from one source to another can be enormous. In Annex VI there is
a comparison of the same data from different sources of information.
In a second phase, we have undertaken several interviews to car manufacturers,
industry specialists, shipping companies and terminal operators.
Through the interviews we have contrasted the information from the secondary
research and we have got inputs from the different players in this industry about the
current situation and the perspectives for the future.
5. Note
We want to highlight that in this report the Annexes play a very important role. In
order to understand the scenarios and recommendations of this report, it is important
to be aware of the complexity of the Automotive Industry in China. There are
between 80 to 120 licensed car manufacturers in China (we have not been able to find
out the exact number). The past history of China has played an important role on this.
Chinese provinces have a high level of autonomy and the size of many European
countries. Consequently each one of these provinces have seen the naissance of at
least one car manufacturer and the provincial or local government has protected one
or several car manufacturers.
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