South China's Guangdong Province imported 810 million US dollars worth of auto parts in 2003, up 53.6 percent over the previous year.
Guangdong Customs figures show the province imported 710 million US dollars of auto parts from Japan, 36.88 million US dollars from Taiwan and 11.22 million US dollars from France.
Under China's commitments to the World Trade Organization, tariffs on imported auto parts will gradually be cut to 10 percentfrom 25 percent.
China will cancel import quotas on some auto parts this year and cancel all import quotas on auto parts by 2005.
Insiders said the cancellation of import quotas was expected to stimulate imports of auto parts and increased auto part imports would boost competition in the domestic auto sector.