Last Monday, Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported that Nissan Motor Co. plans to invest 100 billion yen ($899 million) to build an auto assembly plant in Wuhan, Hubei province, which is expected to have an annual production capacity of 200,000 to 300,000 cars.

Nissan operates in China through a joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. New production lines will be added to a Dongfeng plant in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, which will increase capacity by about 120,000 passenger cars a year.

In addition to Changzhou, Nissan is exploring the possibility of expanding production capacity in China.

According to Nissan's statistics, the automaker sold 720,447 vehicles in China in the first half year, an increase of 10.8 percent compared with the same period last year. It ranked fifth by sales in 2017, with 1.52 million cars sold in the country.