By John Ruwitch
LHASA – The new Buicks on the Kang Da car showroom floor glisten like melted yak butter.
The sheen, however, belies the grueling odyssey that each of the Shanghai-made sedans had to make to reach the biggest auto dealership in Tibet, the “Roof of the World.”
Once they roll off the production line, the Regals and smaller Excelles are stacked on to trains for an 800-mile ride inland to the northern province of Shaanxi.
From there, one by one, they are driven southward on the bumpy highways and dirt roads that lead to Lhasa. The whole journey takes about two weeks.
“When they get to Lhasa they already have about 1,700 miles on the odometer,” said salesman Zuo Zhaohu, himself an import to Tibet from another part of China.
Call it the last frontier for China’s booming car market, the fastest growing in the world.
Sitting in the big showroom and surrounded by his garrulous colleagues who instantly concur, Zuo says the dealership has done well since it opened in the Tibetan capital in June, 2002.
“We see all kinds of people coming in here to buy,” he said. “And most pay in cash.”
One recent customer walked in off the streets to look at the top-of-the-line Buick Regal 3.0. The next day he came back, and pulled 5,000 yuan ($600) out of his pocket as a down payment. The third day he paid the remainder of the 380,000 yuan ($46,900) price.
“He carried it all in a big bag,” Zuo said.
Lhasa, at 11,800 feet above sea level, is a remote backwater to most, but to Zuo and his colleagues, it is a great place to sell cars.
Their enthusiasm — despite obstacles that are literally mountainous — highlights the make-or-break attitude many have about doing business in Tibet.
Working on a tough commission scheme that only pays them at the end of the year, Zuo and his friends sell about 120 cars a month and they are hoping to move 263 Buicks this year. They also sell Volkswagens, Nissans and an array of Chinese brands.
Tibet, indeed China’s entire west, is a tiny part of the car market that grew more than 50 percent last year to about 1.1 million passenger cars. Similar growth is happening this year.
POOR, BUT AN UNTAPPED MARKET
Even when the cars make it to the Lhasa showroom, there are huge barriers to moving them. First of all, people are poor.
In Shanghai, 2002 per capita disposable income was 13,250 yuan ($1,600). In Tibet, by contrast, urban per capita disposable income was 7,869 yuan ($950) in 2001. In the Tibetan countryside, where most of the region’s 2.7 million people live, the figure was considerably less.
While car manufacturer don’t see much in terms of sales in Tibet, a few dealers see it as an untapped market.
“Hardly any car makers think about what happens in the west. They don’t really care,” said Lawrence Ang, an auto analyst with Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong.
“But if you talk about the dealers, probably they find it better to be in the west than in the south or in the east because there’s less competition. They have a monopoly,” Ang said.
And that’s just about how Zuo and 200-odd co-workers at Kang Da feel.
“This market is definitely getting bigger,” he said. “Our boss has bought more land in the back in preparation to expand.”
