Among the 8 percent which intend to purchase cars, 3 percent plan to do so within the next five years, according to a survey of 2,100 local families carried out by the Shanghai Modern Statistical Industry Development Center.

Currently, Shanghai is the biggest automobile manufacturer in China, with automobile output exceeding 300,000 last year, still some way to go to reach the city's designed capacity to produce 500,000 cars on an annual basis.

The survey shows that families with a monthly income of 5,000 yuan and above, as well as well-educated, high income young people between 20 and 39 years of age, aspired to purchase an automobile.

Among the families which plan to buy automobiles, 85.6 percent apt to buy sedans and 84.9 percent favor fairly good cars priced below 150,000 yuan (about 18,000 US dollars).

Nevertheless, according to experts, numerous factors that discourage Shanghainese from buying cars include high auto prices, unreasonably high car maintenance costs, and poor roads and traffic conditions.

So they called for efforts to be made to create a sound environment for car consumption and policy support to aid in satisfying the rising local market demand for automobiles.

(People's Daily August 30, 2002)