Structural changes within China’s domestic commercial vehicle market are expected to exert downward pressure through 2022, according to the most recent China Commercial Vehicle Outlook report, which is jointly published quarterly by ACT and China’s State Information Center.

“2018 was the start of a continuously down market through 2022, with many forces, including modal shifts and technology advances, acting to provide downward pressure,” said Robert Perkins, senior global business consultant at ACT Research.

“That said,” he continued, “the downward pressure won’t apply to all subgroups every year. For example, dump truck demand was up substantially in 2018,” which was due to vehicle-replacement requirements.

According to Perkins, “ACT Research anticipates that, in the next five years, policies regarding commercial vehicles in China will focus on environmental improvement and safety.”

He pointed out that while this development “will promote product updates and technology shifts, they should not cause the large market fluctuations we experienced in 2016 and 2017.”

As to specific market segments, Perkins said that domestic demand for heavy trucks declined about 1% year-over-year in Q4’18, while the tractor market grew more than 12% and the medium truck market closed 2018 down nearly 48% compared to Q4’17.

The Outlook report includes an overview of the Chinese economy and a review and forecast of the country’s heavy- and medium- duty truck and bus markets, as well as analysis of OEM market shares within China.