US car giants report record profits in China

SHANGHAI - Agence France-Presse

An employee walks past new cars at a GM parking lot in Shenyang, Liaoning province. The company says its car sales in China jumped in October.

Two U.S. car makers said yesterday that their sales in China hit record highs in October, as Japanese brands suffered in the Chinese market due to a political dispute between the Asian giants.

General Motors’ sales in China -- the world’s largest auto market -- surged 14.3 percent year-on-year in October to a record for the month of 251,812 vehicles, the company said in a statement.

For the first ten months of the year, GM and its ventures sold around 2.3 million vehicles in China, up 10.5 percent year-on-year, it said. GM sold more than 2.5 million vehicles in China last year. Separately, Ford Motor said its sales in China reached a record 60,518 vehicles in October, jumping 48 percent from the same month last year, according to a statement.

Analysts say the row over disputed islands in the East China Sea, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan, has affected Japanese automakers operating in China. Toyota said yesterday that it expects to sell 200,000 fewer vehicles in China in the second half of its fiscal year and take a 30 billion yen ($373 million) hit to its bottom line from slumping demand in China.