The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) expects sales to slide to about 25.31 million vehicles in 2020, Xu Haidong, CAAM's assistant secretary general, said at a conference on Thursday.

CAAM told Reuters in October that 2019 sales are expected to fall to about 26 million vehicles this year, down about 8% year on year. Xu repeated that prediction on Thursday.

China's car sales fell by 9.1% in the first 11 months this year, having slid 3% last year in the first sales contraction since the 1990s.

By Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh