From zero to hero: Cars made in China now make up more than a tenth of new cars sold

In 2022, the number of cars sold in Australia that were built in China has risen to break the ‘one tenth’ barrier, with more than one in ten new cars sold this year built there.

Remarkably, this has happened in the course of half a decade - in 2017 Australians bought more cars built in Argentina and in Finland than cars built in China.

Now, China is the fourth-largest source of new cars in Australia behind Japan, Thailand, and Korea over the entirety of 2022, but Chinese cars are still gaining traction at pace.

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A total of 993,509 new vehicles have been bought in Australia up to the end of November in 2022, and 108,135 of those came from China. For reference, more than 303,000 came from Japan, 226,000 from Thailand (thanks to our dual-cab ute obsession), and 148,000 from South Korea.

In November, Korea was overtaken by China, with 14,438 cars coming from the peninsula nation’s much larger neighbour, as opposed to the 12,335 that came from Korea. Compared to the 27,801 that came from Japan, and 21,388 from Thailand, China has quite a gap to cover. 

However, at its current rate, China could soon jump a rank, given last year Chinese cars made up less than 70,000 of the 971,000 new cars sold to the end of November. 2022’s figures are a 54.9 per cent increase compared to 2021.

Of course, the rate of growth is slowing. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of new Chinese cars sold in Australia increased by 123.7 per cent, up from 4689 to 10,489.

Between 2019 and 2020, the increase was 70.9 per cent, up from 17,957 to 30,696.

However, now that the numbers are so significant, an increase of even 40 per cent from 2022 to 2023 would mean China and Korea are on par for sales.

Driving the push are brands like MG and GWM, as well as LDV, which the former making up 44,388 sales of the 108,135 new cars from China this year.