BERLIN - The Chinese car market showed extremely strong growth in 2016, growing by 15 percent year-on-year, the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) reported here on Friday.

  "We have raised our China forecast again and now expect a volume of 23.1 million units," VDA president Matthias Wissmann said at the annual press conference, adding that the Chinese car market was expected to grow by a further 5.0 percent to 24.2 million in 2017.

  According to VDA, the car market in Western Europe will grow by 5.0 percent to 13.9 million units in 2016, while there will be 17.1 million new cars on the US roads this year.

In addition, a total of 83.6 million new cars will be sold worldwide in 2017, up by 2.0 percent from this year.