China's auto sales, output hit record highs in November

China's auto sales and output both marked new highs in November, official data showed Tuesday. The new car sales rose 14.1 percent last month from a year earlier to 2.04 million units, while output jumped 21.2 percent to 2.13 million units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said in a statement. Both figures hit all-time highs for the Chinese car industry, according to the CAAM. Sales by Japanese automakers gained 19.2 percent, the group said, indicating that demand for Japanese cars is recovering from a plunge last year, when anti-Japanese sentiment triggered by a territorial dispute between the two countries slashed sales of Japan's vehicles in China. In the first 11 months of 2013, auto sales in the world's biggest automobile market rose 13.5 percent year on year to 19.86 million units, while total output grew 14.3 percent to 19.99 million units. Both sales and output in the January-November period already surpassed the total units for the full year of 2012, the CAAM said. "The auto industry got back on track of double-digit growth and entered a stage of steady growth, after transformation of the sector over the past two years," said Dong Yang, executive vice president of the CAAM, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency. Dong forecast the industry would grow between 8 and 10 percent in the following five to 10 years. Almost 6.5 million Chinese passenger cars were sold in the first 11 months, representing 40 percent to total passenger car sales in China, down 1.3 percent.