Not only has China become the world’s largest car market, it is also the world’s largest producer of cars and other vehicles. New vehicle sales in China now exceed those of the United States.
For many years, only a few Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, managed to achieve a place in the global league of car producers but more recently, new ones have joined the race and now, approximately every second car that is produced on the globe rolls out of an Asian factory.
Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Arve Hansen at The center for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo have recently published the new book “Cars, Automobility and Development in Asia: Wheels of Change”.
Nielsen points out that even the consumption of cars is moving eastwards.
"After decades of rapid economic growth, half the cars that are produced in the world are sold in Asia," says Nielsen.
"An increase in car ownership is perhaps one of the most predictable consequences of economic development and increasing income," adds Hansen.
In no place is this more obvious than in China, which has undergone an urban transformation from cities once dominated by bicycles – through the 1950s to the 1990s – to cities now dominated by cars. In 1986, the Chinese ”Flying Pigeon” (Fei Ge) bicycle factory sold a record three million bicycles. Twelve years later, in 1998, the company sold only 200,000 units. Consequently, it sacked most of its 7,000 workers and moved to a smaller factory.
In 2013, China broke the world record for the most passenger cars sold in any one country in one year – more than 20 million.
Cities built for cars
As the history of the rise of car culture has shown, cars do not simply enter a landscape; they radically transform it. A huge infrastructure is needed to support a society dedicated to automobility. As well as places to purchase cars, that society needs places to drive them and park them and, of course, places to repair them.
Beth E. Notar is a student of Chinese anthropology at Trinity College, Hartford, in the USA. For several years, she has conducted research into the consequences for a society of transforming itself from one dominated by walking, cycling and public transport, to one dominated by automobiles.
"City streets in China, once full of bicycles, have been rebuilt to accommodate cars. The old urban centres of most Chinese cities have been reconstructed to create highways, ring roads and overpasses. This has happened elsewhere too, but in China, the speed and scale of the transformation is unprecedented," says Notar.
More luxury cars
China has the fastest-growing luxury car market in the world. Sales of BMW cars in China rose by 62% in 2011 and BMW has been opening a dealership there almost daily. Lamborghini sales have rocketed by 150%. Over the first three quarters of 2015, the total sales of German luxury cars in China outstripped that of the US.
As might be expected, China’s used car market has been growing as well. In 2014, over six million vehicles were traded. The majority (58 per cent) consisted of saloon cars, accounting for 3.51 million vehicles, but the market for SUVs, of which 200,000 were traded, is the fastest growing.
Shanghai-GM’s Wuling Hongguan MPV had astonishing sales in 2014: 750,000 vehicles. These seven-seaters are just right for the current urban Chinese family: a single child, parents and four grandparents (although Chinese city-dwellers are now allowed to have a second child).
Electric and hybrid car sales in China grew from 38,000 in 2014 to almost 137,000 in 2015 in total. There is evidence that the Chinese government is working to promote electric vehicles (EVs), electric scooters and electric bicycles (EV-2s). For example, Beijing currently limits licence plates for petrol cars to 20,000 per month, but there are no such limits for EVs. Still, this is only a tiny fraction of car sales in China.
China’s motorcycle production and consumption has experienced a parallel and similarly meteoric rise. China is the largest producer of motorcycles: 23 million were manufactured in 2013. However, over 200 Chinese cities currently have bans or restrictions on motorcycles, presumably to both give preference to cars.
Health consequences
How did this shift from a society characterised by bicycle mobility to one characterised by automobility occur? What does it mean to have millions of new vehicles and millions of new drivers enter the landscape in the span of a few years?
Beth A Notar summarizes the negative consequences in the transformation of urban and rural space and place, the negative impact on public health and the increased mortality as follows:
"As one might envision, the public health consequences of shifting from a bicycle society to an automobile society have been huge. In 2007, China overtook the US as the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Since then, the air quality of major Chinese cities has deteriorated."
In July 2015, a non-profit organisation called Berkeley Earth posted a paper on their website documenting some of the negative health consequences of air pollution in China. The authors argue that approximately 1.6 million deaths occur in China each year - over 4,000 deaths per day - which are attributable to air pollution. Elites in Beijing and other cities have begun to invest in expensive air filters for their cars and offices.
"A shift to an automobile society has severely impacted mortality. According to a recent China Daily (2011) report: ‘Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people age 45 and younger in China’," says Notar.
No going back
Despite the negative impacts of automobility – the destruction of old urban centres, increased smog and lung disease, obesity, and traffic fatalities – given the high status associated with driving one’s own car, as well as the pleasure people find in doing car-related activities, Notar feels it difficult to imagine that China will return to the days of streets dominated by millions of bicycles.
"Cars have been prioritised in city planning for so long, it is extremely difficult trying to re-encourage bicycle use now. Still, one urban planner from the city of Chongqing told me in the summer of 2015: ‘We have decided to follow the US model of car culture, but it is unsustainable for us. We need to find other solutions’. Let’s hope it is not too late."
As Hansen and Nielsen concur, it is the high social status associated with car ownership, the comfort of four-wheeled, air-conditioned mobility, as well as the pleasure people find in doing car-related activities, that help to sustain the car’s popularity.
Title Image Credit: Stan Wiechers (Image Cropped)