Despite the chip shortage headwind rolling the global automotive industry, Chinese carmakers' overseas sales doubled in the first five months of this year, South China Morning Post reported.

Chinese automakers exported 760,000 vehicles between January and May, up 103 percent from a year ago. Their performance was buoyed by a strong recovery in production arising from successful containment of the COVID-19 pandemic, the newspaper said, quoting Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association.

China became a bright spot in the global economy during the second half of 2020 when other major developed countries halted production to fight the coronavirus.

A severe shortage of semiconductors affected Chinese companies too. But the impact turned out to much smaller than in the United State and Europe, the newspaper said.

Chinese vehicle assemblers, when resuming production in early 2020, began placing orders for semiconductors then, Peter Chen, an engineer with the car component company ZF TRW in Shanghai, told the newspaper. “They have been ahead of foreign car plants in securing suppliers of the much-needed chips."

AlixPartners, a global consulting firm, said earlier that production volume worldwide would shrink by 3.9 million units in 2021 because of the chip shortage.

Europe was a key growth driver for China's vehicle export from January to May, the newspaper said. Data from the CPCA showed that export to Russia jumped by 35,352 to 44,339 units, while deliveries to the United Kingdom climbed by 18,689 to 27,780 units.

China is the world's largest vehicle market, and the country is encouraging wider use of electric vehicles as part of its efforts to meet its carbon neutrality goal by 2060.