Sun Yunbo never dreamed he might one day design cars. In fact, the farm boy from China's Jilin Province didn't even ride in an automobile until age 19. So the notion that his creations might someday roll off an assembly line was "absolutely unimaginable," Sun says. "A car was a mysterious thing." Today, though, Sun is one of 21 Chinese designers working on the Buick Ex-celle, a new sedan that General Motors Corp. plans to start selling in China this fall. "Now auto design is natural for me," Sun says. Sun is at the vanguard of a trend that's shaking the world of design. As China grew into an export powerhouse over the past decade, most of what its factories churned out was designed elsewhere. Now, like the Japanese in the 1970s and the Koreans in the 1990s, Chinese companies are keen to reap the higher margins and market share that often reward flashy, well-designed products. "Our goal is the transition from 'Made in China' to 'Designed in China,'" says He Renke, chairman of the industrial design department at Hunan University.
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