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China Now Has over 300 Million Motorists on Its Streets

For quite some time now, China has become the sole biggest auto market in the world and demand keeps on rising based on the Chinese people’s newfound wealth. The number of motorists has increased accordingly as well, reaching over 300 million according to Autonews China.
China Traffic 1 photo
Photo: thedailybeast.com
The growth is all the more impressive as it exceeds 100 million over the last four years. Back in 2012, there were just over 200 million drivers in the Asian country, their number growing by 50% by the time we reached 2014.

Going even further into details, it should be pointed out that quite an impressive amount of these 300 million are motorcyclists, 56 million to be more precise, leaving 244 million for automobile enthusiasts.

It’s rather interesting how the demographics spread as well, as only 20 percent of drivers are female and only 9 percent of the total are under 25 years old. At the same time, just 1 percent of them are over 60 years of age.

There’s more room for improvement

The fact that the demand for cars is still growing (at a slower pace, admittedly) shows that the market is yet to mature. With over 100 million new drivers showing up in the last 4 years, the big urban areas (that are around 35 in total across China) are now accounting for a million motorists each.

On top of that, the biggest conglomerates like Shenzen and Beijing count for twice as much, according to the Ministry of Public Safety of China.

Now, the problems that arise are that congestion and pollution are becoming more and more stringent and are starting to affect people’s life in a more direct way.

"Congestion is already pretty bad, especially in tier-one cities. The government is already trying to tackle pollution issues," said Lin Huaibin, a Shanghai-based analyst at IHS Automotive, referring to the biggest metropolitan areas.

Apart from pollution and congestion, accidents are also a problem that has to be dealt with. Normally, with an increase of the number of motorists on the streets, a rise in accidents should also happen. Well, China is different in this regard as well.

According to the Ministry, the number of major traffic accidents has decreased with the death toll dropping by 36 percent in the last two years. Furthermore, the biggest issue law enforcers face in the past was drunk driving but even their numbers slimmed down by a stunning 39 percent.
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