Talk about a comeback. Sales of new vehicles in China actually rose in April after plunging 80 percent just two months earlier in the depths of the coronavirus crisis.
That's great news for the global auto industry, which still has much of its financial health tethered to the world's largest automobile market.
But anyone who thinks China's recovery will serve as a template for a U.S. rebound best think again.
"No way," declared Yan Fabio, echoing a view three other observers — rich with experience in China — shared with me last week.
Not that she has any special insight into the dynamics of car sales in either market. She does, however, have a unique lens into the vast differences in the ways China and the U.S. have tried to snuff out the coronavirus.
She grew up in China and graduated from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. The school is in Wuhan, in the province of Hubei, the epicenter of the global outbreak.
And now she is a vice president of the Michigan branch of the Hubei Chamber of Commerce, which in normal times tries to connect its members to businesses around the Motor City.