China car sales slumped by 11.7 percent to 2.38 million units in October, the fourth consecutive month of year-on-year decline, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said on Friday.
According to GB Times, vehicle sales between January and October this year also declined 0.1 percent to 2.28 million units compared to the same period last year, revealed CAAM.
Xu Haidong, CAAM’s assistant secretary general, said that 2018 sales growth would miss the association’s previous forecast of a three percent rise.
Passenger cars fared particularly poorly, with sales 13.2 percent down year-on-year to 1.95 million.
According to a report released by China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), the production and sales of passenger cars in 2018 are doomed to have negative growth, which could mark the first annual decline in the market for at least two decades.
The downward trend in sales exemplifies the impact of China's trade war with the US, with cars being among the sectors hardest hit by tariffs.
It also underscores how China’s property market continued to increase the debt and cash shortage which resulted in a temporary downturn in the consumption of optional products such as car purchases.
However, amid the slowdown, sales of new energy vehicles (NEV) in China grew by 51 percent to 138,000. The sales of NEV in the first 10 months of 2018 increased by 75.6 percent to 860,000. The tough pollution crackdown was seen as the major driver of its growth.