Doing Business in China

China auto car sales of July up 64 percent to 1.1 million.China, with 1.3 billion people, has long been expected to overtake the United States as the biggest vehicle market. But the U.S. economic slump hastened that shift by depressing American sales while China surged ahead.

Sales of China's domestically-made automobiles totaled 1.09 million units in July, up 63.57 percent compared with the same period of last year, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said Friday.

It was the fifth month in a row that saw auto sales exceed one million units, CAAM said in the statement.

Over the January-July period, sales of domestically-made autos stood at more than 7.18 million units, up 23.38 percent year on year, according to CAAM. The country produced more than 7.10 million units, up 20.23 percent.

The increase in July sales was boosted by surge in sales of passenger cars, which jumped 70.54 percent from a year earlier to 832,600 units in July, CAAM said in the statement.

In the first half of this year, auto sales reached 6.099 million units. The association said earlier last month that it was "cautiously optimistic" about the auto sales on the domestic market in the second half of this year, predicting that China was expected to sell more than 11 million vehicles in 2009, higher than earlier prediction of 10.2 million vehicles.