Nissan Motor Co., Japan's second-largest automaker, began exporting Mississippi-built minivans to China, counting on demand for vehicles in the fast-growing market to lift sales of its Quest model.

An initial shipment of about 200 Quests assembled at Nissan's Mississippi plant were loaded onto a China-bound freighter at the Port of Los Angeles on Friday, spokesman Ernesto Del Aguila said.

Tokyo-based Nissan planned to export as many as 4,000 Quests to China in the business year that ends March 31, 2006, he said. Nissan is the first Japanese carmaker to export vehicles made in the United States to China for sale to consumers.

Nissan and carmakers such as General Motors Corp. (GM), Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have spent billions of dollars to add or expand factories in China during the past five years.

Auto sales increased 9.4 percent in the first half of the year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, after gains of 15 percent last year and 76 percent in 2003. Low labor costs, relatively cheap retail prices and tax and tariff issues have prompted most automakers to produce locally in China.

Nissan's export plan "is worth watching in the sense that it could potentially be the start of something big,'' said Donald Straszheim, a former Merrill Lynch & Co. chief economist who now heads Los Angeles-based research firm Straszheim Global Advisors. "That said, I would be very surprised if exports of US-built autos to China ever amounted to anything too significant.''

GM's shipments of some luxury Cadillac models are among the few US-produced vehicles currently shipped to China. Honda Motor Co. in 1998 and 1999 exported "a very small number'' of Marysville, Ohio-built Accord sedans to China, although the cars weren't sold to consumers, company spokesman Yuzuru Matsuno said.

Nissan would begin selling the left-hand drive Quests in September. Nissan said, the minivan's engine was modified to meet Chinese emission rules, the suspension was tuned to handle China's rougher terrain and the models had standard rear fog lamps. Pricing hadn't been set yet, Del Aguila said.

Nissan's U.S. sales have risen steadily during the past two years, increasing 24 percent in 2004 and 15 percent so far this year, fueled by a series of successful new model releases. Quest, however, hasn't sold as well as expected. Nissan initially planned to sell 60,000 Quests in the United States a year when the model was released in 2003.

(Shenzhen Daily August 3, 2005)