Advertisement

China’s New Love of Cars Can Be a Fatal Attraction

Share
Times Staff Writer

For Lu Fenglin, getting her driver’s license was like getting all dressed up for a party with nowhere to go.

Even though the 28-year-old kindergarten teacher has earned the right to hop into any car and cruise, she hasn’t touched a steering wheel since the day she left driving school four months ago. Most of her friends don’t own cars -- and those who do are reluctant to lend. Buying her own is beyond her means.

“My dream car is a small car, maybe the Chinese-made QQ or the Volkswagen Polo, because they are so cute and relatively more affordable,” said Lu, who is between jobs. “But everything is too expensive for me now. I have no chance at all to practice driving.”

Advertisement

Many among China’s emerging middle class are newly minted members of the driving club -- creating a whole class of people called benbenzu, or the licensed generation. Yet they remain carless, and when these novice drivers do hit the road, they tend to make the already unruly Chinese streets even more dangerous. Hence their other nickname: road killers.

Around the country, traffic accidents killed more than 104,000 people last year -- nearly 300 a day. The fatality rate in the United States is less than half that, even though the nation’s traffic volume is far higher.

Benbenzu drivers are a big part of the problem. In Shanghai, they were responsible last year for 33% of the city’s traffic accidents. About the same proportion of those that resulted in death were attributed to the benbenzu.

A well-known incident here involved a wealthy businessman who had a license but never drove because he had a chauffeur. One day he was in a good mood and asked the chauffeur to move over. Confusing the gas pedal with the brake, the businessman plunged his Audi A6 into the river and drowned.

It wasn’t long ago that rush hour in China meant a boulevard crammed with clunky bicycles with very few four-wheelers in sight. Today, China is home to the world’s fastest-growing automobile market.

Car sales have soared in the last few years thanks to falling prices and rising incomes. The nation last year became the world’s third-largest car market, behind the U.S. and Japan. And most auto industry experts believe that it will surpass Japan and take over the No. 2 spot within a few years. General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner recently said China could become the world’s largest car market within the next generation.

Advertisement

The growth rate is staggering. Globally, automakers are happy to see annual sales growth in the 4% to 6% range. In China last year, it was 75%. Passenger vehicle sales have quadrupled since 1998.

In 1990, the Chinese bought about 6,000 passenger cars, and most were sold to government agencies and high-ranking government and business figures. Last year, Chinese consumers bought 2.1 million passenger vehicles, and about 70% were private purchases.

Development of a private automotive culture in China “is a new revolution for the country,” said Michael Dunne, a Beijing-based auto industry researcher whose company, Automotive Resources Asia, has been tracking the Chinese car market for the last decade.

The result of such torrid growth is a potentially overheating market, severe traffic congestion and worsening air quality for a country already considered one of the most polluted in the world. Some in the West are also worried that China’s newfound love affair with the automobile could further increase rising world energy prices.

The United Nations has warned that if China’s per-capita car ownership were to match that of the West, the nation would need to produce 650 million vehicles to meet demand and would consume more metal and oil than the world could supply.

That scenario is unlikely to unfold anytime soon, however. Average per-capita disposable income in China’s relatively more prosperous urban areas is about $1,000 annually, and it is far less in the rural areas where two-thirds of the nation’s 1.3 billion people live. Despite the rapid expansion of private auto ownership, the freedom of the road remains well beyond the reach of most Chinese.

Advertisement

In Shanghai, high registration prices have meant a larger carless population than in other large urban centers such as Beijing, where the regulations are less strict.

Those restrictions, however, haven’t held back this trend-setting city’s estimated 500,000 benbenzu -- whose ranks are swelling by at least 15% each year. After getting their licenses, many will cajole friends or co-workers to lend them the keys for the weekend, a long holiday or even a ride around the corner.

The drivers make ideal clients for savvy entrepreneurs looking for fresh ways to cash in on the new market.

“There are about 200,000 people in Shanghai getting their driver’s licenses every year, but only about 80,000 people could afford to buy cars. The rest are just itching to drive,” said Shao Weijie, 35, founder of Coco Automobiles Club, which provides members with a rental car and a coach who gets paid by the hour to baby-sit shaky new drivers.

“I’m not ready to buy a car yet,” said Cheng Zhengmin, 40, a manager at an energy company. “But I still want to drive. The coach gave me a lot of confidence. I hope soon I can rent a car and take my family for a weekend outing.”

“Just because someone has a license or even a car doesn’t mean they are ready to drive,” Shao said. “That’s why they really need a reeducation. We are here to provide that critical service.”

Advertisement

Sometimes it’s as simple as reminding them to not lock their keys in the car and to put gas in the tank, or showing them where the spare tire is stored.

That may seem like rudimentary information for people in the West who grew up in a car culture in which nearly every family owns a car and every parent is a live-in driving coach. Most Chinese are well into their adulthoods by the time they are told how to hold a steering wheel. Even after they finish the mandatory two-month course at a state driving school, the driver’s seat often remains as foreign and scary as the cockpit of a plane.

Until recent years, learning to drive in China was indeed more like learning to pilot an aircraft -- a vocational skill reserved for those looking for jobs as chauffeurs or bus drivers.

“Now society has changed so much,” Shao said. “Knowing how to drive is about as basic as knowing how to walk or use the computer.”

Shao was a classic benbenzu, so desperate to practice driving after getting his license three years ago that he used to beg cabbies to switch with him so he could drive the taxi instead.

When that didn’t work, he pleaded with car-owning friends.

“After I borrowed once, I didn’t want to do it again,” Shao said. “A car is like a wife. Who wants to share her with someone else?”

Advertisement

That’s when the former textile salesman got the idea for a new business.

His club now boasts about 1,000 members and has branched out into car sales and repairs. The goal is to hold on to novice drivers so that after they graduate from his rent-a-coach program, they buy their first vehicle from him and become lifelong customers.

The most important link in the chain for his business remains the chaperon driver.

“One woman had a license for 10 years, but she couldn’t even get the car started,” said Wang Guoliang, a former professional driving instructor who is among a dozen coaches working for Shao. “Two other students confessed that their licenses had been bought and that they never spent a day in driving school or ever touched a car.”

It’s stories like these that Shao hopes will keep him in business. “These new drivers don’t know the top end of a chopstick from the bottom,” said Shao, who loves to use food metaphors to make his point. “But someone who eats every day won’t make that kind of mistake.”

Times staff writer John O’Dell in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Advertisement