A drive for success: Buicks roll down the catwalk at the opening ceremony of a Shanghai General Motors plant on May 28, 2005. General Motors (GM) opened its first Chinese factory in 1997, becoming one of the early foreign car manufacturers in China. During the phenomenal growth of recent years, China’s car market has become the second largest in the world in terms of units sold, behind only the United States. Despite the recent economic downturn, sales of passenger cars are still expected to grow 10 percent this year (compared with 24 percent or more in recent years).