China’s auto sales rose 5.4% to 1.83 million vehicles in March, a slowdown of 50 percentage points from the previous year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing figures released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. March growth was up slightly compared with that of February, when sales growth lagged to 4.6%, the slowest rate in the last two years. Sales expansion has slowed because of factors including the rising price of oil, the Japanese earthquake’s disruption of production lines and the expiration of China’s tax breaks on small vehicles, said Zhu Yiping, the association’s head of statistics. Vehicles sales grew 8.1% to 4.98 million vehicles in the first quarter, a sharp slowdown from growth of 72% one year earlier.