Following the news that the retail sales of new passenger vehicles in China declined by 6.5% to 1.68 million units in June, according to the preliminary data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA);

David Leggett, Automotive Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“June’s year-on-year decline was in line with expectations and needs to be seen against a particularly strong result in the same month last year – due to heavy discounting as dealers looked to shift stock ahead of emission regulation changes.

“It also follows a strong result in May as the market continued its rebound from a sharp Q1 decline due to COVID-19. Indeed, the June car market was 2.6% ahead of May’s.

“This leaves China’s light vehicle market on course to reach GlobalData’s forecast of 22.1 million sales this year, a result that would be just 10.3% down on 2019.

“While risks remain, the strong bounce-back of the world’s largest vehicle market in recent months is welcome news for the automotive industry and manufacturers – both Chinese domestics and foreign companies with Chinese manufacturing joint ventures.”