China Premium Sales vs Imports Comparison : 2020-22

One of the reasons I don't get too excited about the Chinese car market is that all sales are for locally made only. Due to high import duty, most sales are only for domestically manufactured cars. I would like to see real figures released with imports included but if they are sourced from a manufacturing association, I guess that isn't going to happen. 

For mainstream brands, the percentage imported would be negligible but what about premium brands where margins are higher and duty can be better absorbed? I needed to do some digging so I decided to check out what sales were for local versus imported premium cars.

Using BMW/MINI as an example, in 2022 665,000 sales were officially sold according to local reports, but BMW said they sold 792,000. That means for the year 16% of BMW and MINI sales were for imported cars and 84% would be of cars made in China. That's down from just over 20% for 2020 and 2021.

Mercedes is almost identical but Audi is a good half lower for imported volume. Volvo is very similar to Audi. Land Rover isn't as heavily involved with Chinese manufacture and about half of Land Rovers are imported. That makes local sales figures for LR look much poorer than they are.

Jaguar's figures are strange. They were around 20% imported but in 2022 importing cars seemed to end. The -2% figure would indicate that the local figure is slightly wrong as I'm sure Jaguar would know how many they sold. 

Now for the two US brands. Cadillac doesn't import cars according to the data below but a 21,000 unit discrepancy in 2022 presumably shows the local figure is too high. Lincoln started manufacturing in 2020 so that would account for the drop of imported cars. 

If you are wondering where Porsche is, they import 100%  so they will not appear on local sales charts. That also applies to luxury marques too of course. Lexus sales seem to be included with Toyota in Chinese sales releases. Acura has recently left and I didn't find Infiniti import sales for 2022. 

In summary, I expected more imported volume for Audi, Cadillac and Lincoln. For the most part, however, local sales releases aren't too far off the mark for most premium brands, with Land Rover and Porsche the exceptions.