Recent statistics show that China now has over 100 million cars on the nation's roads.
Beijing traffic jam Image: poeloq |
China is now the second largest car market in the world, ahead of Japan, with just over 100 million cars on the road. According to the Ministry of Public Security and Traffic Management Bureau, the amount of personal vehicles in China reached 219 million by August, with around 119m motorcycles and 100m cars.
Data from the Ministry of Public Security shows that car ownership has increased by 9.5m units annually from 2006-2010, with vehicles sales for the first eight months of 2011 already topping 9.8m. There were also over ten times the amount of privately owned passenger cars in 2009 than in 2000.
Ming Ouyang, Head of the Department of Automotive Engineering at Tsinghua University, predicts that car ownership in China will peak at 300 million by around 2025 to 2030. Ming stresses the urgency to develop energy-saving cars, an attitude shared by the government, who have made development of new energy vehicles a national policy.