China exported 241,000 motor vehicles in the first half, a growth of 71.2 percent on the same period last year, with Russia the biggest market.

The combined export value amounted to 2.7 billion US dollars, up 110.7 percent, said Fu Peizhao, deputy secretary-general of the auto branch of China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, on Wednesday at a Sino-Russian auto trade forum held in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

Vehicles for commercial purposes, including trucks, large and medium-sized buses and special-purpose vehicles, accounted for 65 percent of the total auto exports and 72 percent of the total export value, said Fu.

The per-unit price of China's exported vehicles averaged 11,200 US dollars, up 23 percent on the same period last year.

A total of 38,600 vehicles valued at 450 million US dollars were exported to Russia during the period, ranking first, according to the chamber.

Kazakhstan ranked second in China's automobile export market with 6,445 vehicles, while Iran ranked third.

Other countries that imported more than 100 million US dollars worth of Chinese vehicles included Algeria, Syria, Vietnam, South Africa and Ukraine.

Sino-Russia trade hit 20.5 billion dollars in the first half and it was likely to exceed 40 billion dollars for the whole year, said Wang Jingsong, a Ministry of Commerce official, at the forum.

(Xinhua News Agency August 2, 2007)