China's latest boom: Buying cars -- big cars
Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, August 18, 2007


It was the frugal minicar that lured the Liu family to the showroom, but it was the full-size sedan that hooked them. Like countless other first-time auto buyers in China, the Lius were moving up in the world, and getting four wheels with plenty of steel was a key part of that process.

"A car! This means so much to us," said Liu Yang, while her husband, Liu Yue, fiddled with the dashboard of the Chery Eastar sedan that they were about to buy in a showroom in suburban north Beijing.

The biggest car-buying boom in world history is under way in China as vast numbers of people join the middle class, abandon their bicycles for autos and sport utility vehicles -- and, in the process, add to China's already fast-growing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Only a decade ago, cars owned by individuals were rare, and bicycles were the main mode of transport. Now, streets are clogged bumper-to-bumper, and total car ownership is expected to surpass the U.S. level by 2025.

Local governments are wrestling with transportation and land-use decisions that will set China's course for decades. Should China look and act like the car-focused sprawl of Los Angeles, they ask, or the public transit-oriented clusters of European cities?

To read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/18/CHINA.TMP