Chinese passenger car sales have climbed 55 percent from February 2009, with strong demand for smaller cars and four wheel drive vehicles.

Total vehicle sales leaped to 13.6 million, making China the world's biggest auto market.

As a comparison, US auto sales rose 13 percent from a year earlier to an annualized rate of 10.4 million.

The Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February kept China's sales well below the 1.1 million passenger cars sold in January, when sales more than doubled from a year earlier.