On January 12, Zhao Lei took a 13-hour flight from Brussels to Beijing. A day later, the construction entrepreneur was preparing himself for an even longer journey from Tianjin, a large port city near the Chinese capital, to his home in western China. Mr Zhao had just returned from a seven-nation tour of Europe with his wife, their first trip outside China, and was now in the market for a status symbol popular among the country’s aspiring middle classes — an imported Audi Q7 sport utility vehicle. Rather than buy a Q7 from an authorised, nearby Audi dealership, which would cost at least Rmb828,000 ($134,000), according to the German manufacturer’s suggested China retail price, Mr Zhao had travelled to the country’s largest automotive market for “parallel imports” in Tianjin. There the same model, imported from the US by an unauthorised dealer, would cost him just Rmb660,000 including shipping costs and import duties — a 20 per cent saving. “A friend told me about this market, so I decided to come by and take a look,” Mr Zhao told the Financial Times. “I will start the drive back to Yinchuan this afternoon. It’s a 1,200km trip and will take 16 hours.” In distance terms, Mr Zhao’s journey from Tianjin to the capital of Ningxia province was the equivalent of driving from New York to Chicago. Over the past year, multinational car manufacturers have been the targets of an investigation into allegedly anti-competitive pricing practices by Chinese regulators. More recently, they have had to pay large rebates to dealers who say that slower annual car sales growth — 10 per cent last year compared with 16 per cent in 2013 — is eroding their profitability. The growth of parallel car imports will put further pressure on car companies in the world’s largest car market. This is especially true for manufacturers of premium brands that sell more cars in China than in any other market and reap an even greater share of their global profits there. “They’re trying everything they can to keep [parallel imports] under control,” says Max Warburton at Bernstein Research. “But from what you can see with your own eyes in Tianjin, it’s very difficult to button down market forces.” Until they were formally legalised by the Chinese government in August, markets for parallel car imports operated in — at best — a quasi-legal grey area. About 83,000 cars were imported through such channels in 2013, according to the Chinese Automobile Dealers Association, compared with overall passenger-vehicle sales of 18m that year. The Tianjin market accounted for more than 80 per cent of parallel car imports. In addition to the Audi Q7s that Mr Zhao was eyeing, the market’s halls were full of brand new BMWs, Land Rovers, Maseratis, Mercedes and even monster Ford pick-up trucks. Many still bore stickers from the dealerships where they were originally purchased, in locations as far afield as Abu Dhabi, California, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Others sported certificates from motor vehicle registries in Colorado and Texas. With their legal status now clear in China, parallel car imports are surging. Official 2014 volume estimates are not yet available for the nascent market. But Wang Hua, who runs one of the dozens of small dealerships at the Tianjin market, said that he sold about 20,000 SUVs last year — most of them Toyota Prados imported from the Middle East. Last week, Shanghai’s new free-trade zone issued its first regulations governing parallel car imports, paving the way for the emergence of another large supply channel. Mr Wang’s Prados are priced at Rmb380,000, or 10 per cent below the Rmb420,000 that he says Toyota’s authorised dealers charge for comparable models. Most of his sales are to sub-dealers, suggesting that smaller parallel import markets are proliferating across the country. As he spoke, Mr Wang was regularly interrupted by calls from buyers. “We only have one car of that kind left and another person wants it too, so you may have to pay more,” he told one caller. “But I will give it to you if your offer is more or less all right, OK?” Publicly, at least, multinational carmakers are reluctant to criticise the rise of China’s new parallel import markets, whose low prices are popular with both buyers and government officials intent on reducing the high cost of many goods and services. Car companies instead say that the more expensive vehicles sold through their authorised dealers, unlike ones rerouted from the US or Middle East, are manufactured to exact Chinese standards. 1月12日，趙烈經過13個小時的飛行後，從布魯塞爾抵達北京。一天後，這位從事建築業的企業家就要踏上一次更長的旅程，從港口城市天津出發，回到他位於中國西部的家鄉。 趙烈和妻子剛完成了一趟歐洲七國遊，這是他們首次出國旅遊，現在他又想買一輛進口奧迪(Audi)Q7運動型多功能車(SUV)。這款車被視作社會地位的象徵，深受有追求的中國中產階層的歡迎。 趙烈沒有在家鄉的奧迪授權經銷店購買Q7，根據這家德國汽車製造商對中國的建議零售價，那兒的售價至少是82.8萬元人民幣（合13.4萬美元）。他去的是位於天津的中國最大的平行進口汽車市場（以下簡稱“天津市場”）。在這裏，經未授權經銷商從美國進口的同款型號汽車售價僅爲66萬元人民幣（包括運費和進口關稅在內），便宜了20%。 趙烈對《金融時報》說：“一個朋友跟我說過這個市場，所以我決定順便過來看看。我今天下午開車回銀川，全程1200公里，要花16個小時。”以距離來算，趙烈從天津到寧夏省會的這趟旅行，相當於從紐約開車到芝加哥。 過去一年，中國監管機構發起了一場所謂反壟斷定價調查，跨國汽車製造商成了調查目標。最近，製造商不得不付給經銷商大額返點，因爲經銷商說汽車銷量年增長速度變慢（2013年爲16%，2014年爲10%），侵蝕了他們的盈利能力。 平行進口汽車的增長將對這個全球最大汽車市場裏的車企帶來進一步壓力。對於高端品牌汽車製造商來說更是如此，他們在中國的汽車銷量超過在其他任何一個市場的銷量，從中國市場獲得的利潤佔全球總利潤的比例也比其他品牌汽車製造商更高。 伯恩斯坦研究公司(Bernstein Research)的馬克斯•沃伯頓(Max Warburton)說：“他們正盡一切努力來控制（平行進口汽車）。但從你在天津親眼所見的情況來看，市場力量是很難壓制住的。” 去年8月中國政府正式賦予平行進口汽車合法地位，在此之前，平行進口汽車市場充其量算一個準合法的灰色地帶。根據中國汽車流通協會(Chinese Automobile Dealers Association)的數據，2013年乘用車總銷量爲1800萬輛，而經由平行進口渠道進入中國的汽車有約8.3萬輛。天津市場佔全國平行進口汽車市場的逾80%。 除了趙烈看上的奧迪Q7，天津市場的大廳裏還停滿了嶄新的寶馬(BMW)、路虎(Land Rover)、瑪莎拉蒂(Maserati)、梅賽德斯-奔馳(Mercedes)，甚至還有福特(Ford)的大怪物皮卡。許多車身上還貼有原經銷商的標籤，顯示它們的原始購買地點遠至阿布扎比、美國加州、馬里蘭州和賓夕法尼亞州。還有一些汽車亮出了美國科羅拉多州和得克薩斯州的機動車輛登記證書。 如今平行進口汽車在中國的法律地位得到明確，它們的數量正迅速飆升。該新生市場還沒有可用的2014年官方估計銷量數據。不過天津市場上幾十家小經銷商之一王華表示，去年他售出了約2萬輛SUV，其中大多爲從中東進口的豐田(Toyota)普拉多(Prado)。近日，上海新的自貿區出臺了首項對平行進口汽車進行監管的政策，爲另一條大型供應渠道的形成鋪平了道路。 王華的普拉多標價38萬元人民幣，他說同款車型在豐田授權經銷商那兒售價42萬元人民幣，比他貴了10%。他的大多數買家都是二級分銷商，說明更小的平行進口汽車市場正在全國各地鋪開。 王華說話期間常被來自買家的電話打斷。他在電話裏對一位買家說：“這種車型我們只剩一輛了，還有一個客戶也想要，你可能得加價。只要你報價差不多我就賣給你，好嗎？” 跨國汽車製造商至少不願公開批評中國新崛起的平行進口汽車市場，其低廉的售價同時受到買家和政府官員兩方面的歡迎，後者一心想要把許多商品和服務的高昂價格降下來。 車企的說法則是：通過授權經銷商所售的車輛雖然較貴，但它們是完全按照中國標準制造的，與經由美國和中東進口的那些汽車不同。 大衆(Volkswagen)旗下的奧迪(Audi)表示：“原則上，奧迪提倡公開、公平的競爭。經過奧迪在華經銷商認證的車輛，從配件、底盤、到動力總成，都符合當地消費者在舒適方面的偏好，適應當地特殊的氣候條件和駕駛狀況。” 沃伯頓對這種說法持懷疑態度。他說：“即使（爲不同市場製造的同款汽車）存在任何‘官方認可’的差異，這種差異絕對也是細微的，而且多半無關緊要。如果能便宜30%，爲什麼不買（平行進口汽車）呢？要是我就會買。”
