On Monday 3 November, a number of Chinese delegates will visit SMMT to learn more about the UK automotive industry. With a highly skilled and flexible workforce, as well as a favourable business environment, the UK has a lot to offer global manufacturers, but why the focus on China?
Put simply, China is a manufacturing superpower – something of which most international businesses are aware.
To put its scope and scale into perspective, we’ve picked out four statistics about Chinese automotive manufacturing and how the UK is benefiting.
In 2013, there were 22 million new vehicles registered in China, as a growing proportion of its 1.3 billion population entered the market for a new vehicle. To put this into perspective, the second-largest vehicle market, the US, saw 16 million registrations, while Japan, the third-largest, registered 5.3 million.
China produced 2,525 vehicles every hour in 2013, equating to 22 million for the full year. This has nearly quadrupled since 2005, when 5.8 million vehicles were built.
Of the 1,201,395 UK-built cars that were exported in 2013, 10% found a home in China. Jaguar Land Rover sold almost 100,000 cars in China last year, while BMW sold almost 18,000. Bentley, Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin all have strong exports to the country.
So far, four of China’s major vehicle manufacturers have a manufacturing or R&D base in the UK. SAIC, Chang’an and Lifan all own or partner with UK technical centres, while the iconic London Taxi Company was acquired by Hangzhou-based Geely in 2013.
