million cars were sold in China, 17.3 million in the United States. By 2019, the number was 25 million in China and 17 million in the United States. The weight of China in the world economy was made clear by the novel coronavirus. When the SARS epidemic began in 2002, China accounted for only 4 percent of world GDP. When the coronavirus hit in 2020, it was 16 percent, meaning that the economic impact would reverberate around the world even before the coronavirus shut down much of the rest of the world.
