More new automobiles will be sold in China this year than have ever been sold in any nation ever in a calendar year. The largest car buying nation on earth
New-car sales in China will jump about 30% to 18 million units this year. These sales have not just been in the cities but also in small and midsize cities in the nation’s interior.
With car popularity comes a downside. Congestion. The London Daily Telegraph gives China the record which happened on December 10. There was effectively a 60-mile tailback stretching from the capital Beijing to the northern province of Inner Mongolia. But it was not, despite claims, the longest traffic jam. That record was in Lyon, France, in 1980, and it was 103.9 miles long and was reported in the Nikkei Dec. 10 morning edition. So Beijing gets marks for a solid try but it did not get the record. The question has to be asked: where will it all end?