Huang Qifan, the former mayor of Chongqing, publicly highlighted today the alarmingly low profit margins within China's automotive manufacturing industry. Despite the fact that automobile manufacturing is theoretically a sector known for its relatively high returns, he revealed that as of June this year, the industry's output value profit rate stood at a mere 5%. To put this into perspective, the profits generated from selling 30 million Chinese cars are significantly less than those from selling just 9 million Toyota vehicles in Japan.