'Generation zero' steers growth
By Patti Waldmeir and John Reed in Shanghai with,additional reporting by Yan Jin
Published: December 27 2008 02:00 | Last updated: December 27 2008 02:00
Sixty-two-year old Sheriff Wang is a member of "generation zero": born and raised before China had a modern car industry (or for that matter, private property).
In the past generation, China's car market has leapt from almost nothing to the second largest in the world - and that has meant a lot of driving lessons. And though Chinese car sales have recently faltered, in line with the global slowdown, China's driving schools still have plenty of pupils. Only 20 in 1,000 Chinese own a car; China will provide learner drivers well into the next decade and beyond.
Mr Wang is one of them: this neat and dapper pensioner spends his mornings practising parallel parking and three point turns on the deserted roads of a disused airport outside Shanghai, at the Shenhao driving school. He sits hunched tensely over the wheel of one of the school's bright yellow Volkswagen Santanas, grinding the gears and applying too much pressure to the brakes, just like learner drivers everywhere. In the back seat sits his 38-year-old son, who is also learning to drive for the first time.
Shi Zhibing, who manages the school, says students like Mr Wang are motivated by what he calls "dream fulfilment": "Some old people just want to fulfil their youthful dreams of having driving lessons," he says, adding "they don't even have a car. Some don't even want to drive."
In fact, says Mr Shi, 90 per cent of the students who pay him Rmb5,000 (€520, $730, £497) to learn to drive do not own a vehicle. For that reason, he says there has been no drop in pupils ready to learn to drive, despite the global economic slowdown and its impact on car sales in China. He says 60 per cent of those who pass the stringent Shanghai driving test will eventually buy a car and some others will drive a company car at work.
But for others, such as Mr Wang, learning to drive is about recapturing a lost youth that was out of reach in the China he grew up in. He wants to learn to drive "so there will be more fun in life", he says, explaining that Chinese people view those in their 50s and 60s as elderly, but he is convinced that he is "young enough to do this". He took early retirement from his job as a sheriff at the age of 50, owing to back problems.
Now Mr Wang wants to pick up his grandchildren from school, help with errands and household chores, and take the kind of short road trips to local tourist attractions that Chinese people are only now beginning to embark on - something that, for generation zero in its youth would have been "simply unimaginable". In classic Chinese fashion - where the young are meant to look after the old - he thinks it is up to his son to buy him the car he needs to fulfil his youthful ambitions.
But it is not only generation zero that has caught the car bug in China: generation Y (the 1980s and 1990s birth generation) is wild about motoring too. Tao Han and Du Zi Juan are two ladies in their late 20s who learned to drive at the same school as Mr Wang.
They bought a car on the same day, and applied for a driving licence on the same day - and since then they have belonged to the Kitten Car Club, an enthusiasts' club for women drivers. They embark on a weekly karaoke outing, and learn how to change their tyres and refuel on the Kitten Club website. Their ambition is to "eat fish head soup in Zhejiang province", not too far from Shanghai (to go further, they need an experienced driver who can read a map, they say). So far, their longest excursion has been to Wu Xi, 400km away. Ms Tao boasts that she drove 180kph on that trip. She aspires to buy an Audi R8, despite its Rmb1.8bn price tag: "I can't buy it now, but one day, if I grow my business enough, I'll buy it".
For the moment, both generation zero and generation Y may have to pause to reflect on the global economic crisis: but in the longer term, the demographic pressure is undeniable. In China, 20 in 1000 people own a car; in Europe and the US, at least 500 in 1,000. The simple maths will drive Chinese car enthusiasm well into the future.
Additional reporting by Jan Yin
Slideshow on China's influence on car design: www.ft.com/chinacars
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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