SAIC Motor Co Ltd, a Fortune 500 company and one of the "Big Four" Chinese automakers, started construction on the SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co (SGMW) base in the Liangjiang New Area Chongqing in June 2013.

The top 10 Chinese automakers will now all be represented in the city, thus contributing to its efforts to increase its international competitiveness.

The base - which will cover an area of 1.6 million square meters, at a cost of 6.6 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in its first-phase construction of two and half years - is expected to produce 400,000 cars and 400,000 engines a year by 2014, and it is also expected to earn 13 billion yuan in sales.

A director of SAIC Motor said that the Chongqing base will mainly produce existing, mature products of the Wuling brand, and they hope it will become a crucial part of SGMW's strategy to compete in the market in China's southern, northern, western and central areas.

The company also hopes SGMW will manage to produce 2 million cars by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). The director also said that they chose Liangjiang New Area due to its status as the first national development and opening-up zone in the inland - in addition to its efforts to create an international motor city and its advantages regarding costs, market mechanisms and policies. He also cited the new area's conditions for investment and industrial development, which he said are attractive to automakers. A total of 16 enterprises that specialize in car parts - from Guangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hebei, and the city of Shanghai - are also set to open production facilities, in a total area covering 666.667 square meters, and they have already invested 3.64 billion yuan.