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Brilliance China Automotive Holdings, the first Chinese auto company to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), said it plans to withdraw that listing from the NYSE because of a decline in trading volume and a concurrent rise in administrative costs.

Based in the northern city of Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, Brilliance has a joint assembly venture with BMW and builds medium-size vans under license from Toyota. It also builds a modest range of passenger cars under the Zhonghua brand name and has recently begun to export those vehicles to Europe.

Brilliance suffered a setback to its export plans when its flagship model, renamed BS6 for Europe, failed crash tests last month in Germany.

Company representatives already have begun soliciting prospective U.S. dealers in preparation for a planned 2009 launch in North America.

Brilliance said that after delisting on NYSE, its American depositary shares will trade over the counter.

Brilliance stopped losing money in the first half of this year after three years of losses, banking on a 58.3 percent sales rise in the first half to 146,000 vehicles from the same period last year. The automaker lost 398 million yuan (US$52.47 million) in 2006 and 650 million yuan in 2005.

The Chinese company aims to sell 300,000 vehicles this year, an increase of 43 percent.

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