An Examination of Major Chinese Auto manufacturing Firms between 1956-2000: From A Global Supply Chain Perspective

In 2005, the Chinese auto production output has surpassed France and became the world’s fourth largest Auto manufacturing country (just behind US, Japan and Germany) in terms of auto-related manufacturing output. The phenomenal growth of Chinese auto manufacturing, however, received relatively little research attention. This paper examines major Chinese auto-manufacturing firms between 1956-2000. The paper is organized as follows: (1)we will first review the history of Chinese auto-manufacturing since 1955 when the first automobile plant was ever built in China. We will briefly review issues related to the growth patterns, issues and management practices during the past 50 years; (2) we present key current growth issues related to current Chinese auto-manufacturing in spite of evolutionary transitions that have been made over the years; (3) we present the prospects of Chinese auto-manufacturing in the years to come and the critical managerial issues especially from the global supply chain perspectives. In this abstract we show some key tables and research framework