Rise of the China Auto Industry?

With the Big Three auto-makers of the USA; Ford, General Motor and Chrysler on the verge of collapse and difficulties facing Japanese car makers; Honda and Toyota, it seems likely that there could be a vacuum for Chinese car makers to fill.

Although it is certainly true that the Chinese auto-industry is far from global standard and that there really is little demand for cars given the current global economic crisis but world economy would eventually recover and with the huge losses incurred by the Americans and Japanese and the drastic scaling back of operations; the gap between these global players and the Chinese carmakers would inevitably narrow.

The key would lie in what the Chinese carmakers do with themselves in the next 3 to 5 years of the auto-industry downturn. If the Chinese carmakers use this opportunity to invest in more R&D and hire experienced engineers and managers from the Japanese and American firms, the chances of catch up would be relatively high. We should also remember the large domestic market that the Chinese auto-industry has. As a new player to the global car industry, Chinese carmakers are less dependent on the world market and would also have more room to grow. Now it remains to be seen if this would indeed come true.