China produced nearly 21 million passenger cars for the first time in January-October 2023, surpassing the European Union and Britain by half, RIA Novosti calculated based on national statistics.
Neither the pandemic nor the deterioration of relations with the US over Taiwan prevented the Celestial Empire from steadily increasing the output of passenger cars. China produced 20.7 million cars in January-October, which was an absolute record among similar periods of previous years and more than 20 per cent higher than the result of pre-pandemic 2019. At the same time, things are not going so well in the European Union and Britain against the backdrop of anti-Russian sanctions: in the first 10 months of this year, output lagged behind the figures of four years ago by 22.5 per cent to 10.4 million units.
The leaders in the reduction of car production this year among European countries were Finland, where it collapsed 4.5 times – to 20 thousand units, Slovenia, which showed a 3.3-fold drop – to 61.2 thousand units, as well as Romania with a 2.5-fold reduction in output – to 160.3 thousand units. The Netherlands (2.4-fold drop to 65 thousand units) and France (1.7-fold drop to 759.3 thousand units) were also among the five anti-leaders. Only Belgium managed to increase production, but only by a modest 1% – to 222 thousand units.
Quite painfully, the events of the past four years also affected the dynamics of motor vehicle sales in European countries – the result for the first 10 months of this year was 20.22% below 2019. The strongest sales of cars fell in Slovenia (by 33.34%, to 42.3 thousand units), Austria (by 29%, to 201.8 thousand units), Hungary (by 28.33%, to 91.4 thousand units), Spain (by 24.63%, to 798.4 thousand units) and Finland (by 22.88%, to 75 thousand units).
China, on the other hand, was steadily increasing its dynamics: this year was a record year for the country not only in terms of production, but also in terms of sales, which for four years increased by 20% to 20.6 million units. The Celestial Empire managed to achieve such figures thanks to its extensive production base: according to the latest available data, 437 factories operate in the country for the benefit of the automotive industry. This is almost four times more than in the EU (80) and the UK (36) combined.
China is also well supplied with labour: about 30 million people work in the automotive industry there, which is more than twice as many as in Europe (12.9 million people). At the same time, in Europe, against the background of the deplorable situation with the production of cars, the number of people employed directly in their production has been decreasing by 10 per cent over the past few years. At the same time, the number of support staff has increased by 6.5 per cent.
Indirectly, the deteriorating situation in the EU production sector is also reflected in the decreasing consumption of hydrocarbons in the region. Thus, according to the International Energy Agency, in January-August this year Europe reduced its annualised consumption of gas by 15.2%, oil – by 11.6%, coal – by 20.5%, uranium – by 2.5%. At the same time, renewable energy sources did not compensate for this drop-off – their use grew by only 4.5%. As a result, electricity production decreased by 4.7%.
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