China's automobile industry showed a growing trend in August, with both production and sales of vehicles increasing month on month, while those of new energy vehicles (NEVs) recorded a double-digit year-on-year growth, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers on Tuesday.
In August, auto production and sales in China surpassed 2.49 million and 2.45 million units, respectively, showing month-on-month increases of 9 percent and 8.5 percent, with year-on-year decreases of 3.2 percent and 5 percent, indicating a smaller decline compared with the previous month.
During the January-August period, auto production and sales totaled about 18.67 million and 18.77 million units respectively, reflecting year-on-year growth of 2.5 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
In August, the production and sales of NEVs achieved 1.09 million and 1.10 million units, respectively, representing an increase of 29.6 percent and 30 percent year on year. The sales of NEVs in August account for 44.8 percent of the new vehicle sales in China.
In the first eight months of this year, the production of NEVs reached nearly 7.01 million units, rising 29 percent year on year. The sales of NEVs hit almost 7.04 million units, growing by 30.9 percent from a year earlier. The market share of NEVs in China reached 37.5 percent in the period.
On the export front, auto exports reached 511,000 units in August, marking a year-on-year increase of 25.4 percent. Among these, exports of NEVs totaled 110,000 units, showing a 22-percent growth year on year.
China's auto industry reports rising vehicle production, sales in August
With the beginning of the cotton harvest season, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is anticipating higher yields from advancements in agricultural technology and mechanization.
Xinjiang is the largest production area of high-quality commodity cotton in China. The 2.47-million-hectare cotton growing area in the region has produced more than 5 million tons of cotton for six consecutive years.
The northern and southern parts of the vast autonomous region have different climates, different cotton varieties and also different growing periods. Currently, cotton picking started two weeks ago in northern Xinjiang, while the harvesting has just begun in the southern areas.
In Tumxuk City, located in southern Xinjiang, cotton farmers are using all-in-one harvesters to help them pick cotton, separate the flowers from the stalks and pack them into bundles.
"In the past, we picked the cotton manually. It took us more than a month to pick 100 mu (6.67 hectares) of cotton, and the cost reached 1,000 yuan per mu (about 2,106 U.S. dollars per hectare). Now, we use domestically produced cotton pickers to gather them, which have high efficiency and low cost. It now takes less than a day to harvest my 100 mu of cotton, with a cost less than 200 yuan per mu," said Turaxun Samat, a local farmer.
This year, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the new cotton planting technology of drip irrigation under the mulching film at the appropriate emergence temperature, replacing the old method of irrigating before sowing. The technology can greatly improve the emergence rate while also saving water resources.
In addition, the precision sowing supported by BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and remote sensing monitoring by the agricultural big data platform have also been widely adopted across Xinjiang, contributing to the growth of cotton output.
"This year, a total of 1,057,800 mu (about 70,520 hectares) of cotton have been planted in Tumxuk City, and the unginned cotton yield is estimated at 451.4 kilograms per mu, an average increase of 11.7 kilograms per mu over the previous year," said Chen Yongsen, a member of the leadership of the city's Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
The cotton harvesting in Xinjiang is expected to end in early November.
Xinjiang enters cotton harvest season with higher yield expected
