This Day, That Year

Item from April 23, 1995, in China Daily: Santana cars leave the newly installed second production line at the Shanghai-Volkswagen Automobile Corp, a Sino-German joint venture. The new line boosts the venture's production capacity to 200,000 cars a year ... Chinese families will eventually become the country's major buyers of automobiles, replacing the current contingent of institutional and company buyers - if the central government prioritizes the move ... By the end of last year, 10 million motor vehicles were running on the country's highways, 20 percent of these were individually owned. The country has at least 163 motor vehicle manufacturers, only eight of which receive the central government's strong backing.

To combat escalating levels of air pollution, the government is promoting low-emission vehicles and has set a target of putting 5 million electric cars on the road by 2020.

New energy vehicles have also been highlighted in recent auto shows, including the 2015 Shandong new energy vehicle exhibition in March, as seen in the photo above. Similarly, a record 103 new energy vehicles are being displayed at the ongoing 16th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition, also known as Auto Shanghai 2015.