Toyota aims to double China car sales to 1.8 million by 2015

CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) aims to sell up to 1.8 million cars annually in China by 2015, up from about 900,000 cars it sold in the world's biggest auto market last year, a senior executive said on Thursday.

Executive vice president Atsushi Niimi, speaking at an auto conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu, said the Japanese car maker's target this year is to sell 1 million cars in China.

Niimi's comments come after the Japanese car maker posted a second consecutive monthly fall in China sales in August, which company spokesman Takanori Yokoi said was due to a high base from last year.

That 1 million level this year should account for about 12 percent of Toyota's anticipated overall global sales this year.

The company wants to push that ratio to 15 percent by 2015, Niimi said. That should translate into China-market sales of 1.5 million to 1.8 million cars by 2015, he added.

(Reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu; Writing by Kazunori Takada; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)