I think China's industry is fundamentally different than that of Korea. Korea has only had four major brands, and they've only existed since the 1970's. Prior to that Korea had little or no history of building cars.
Like China, Korea's early cars were licensed built clones of European cars or modified versions thereof (though the first car, the Hyundai Pony, was largely original). But unlike China there was little or no domestic competition. Korea's industry developed more like Sweden's - small players in the local market who grew out of larger industrial manufacturers (Saab from Saab Aeroplane, Volvo from SKF bearings).
China's industry now is probably more akin to the French industry. There are a large number of small players just as there were in France in, say, 1918. But already there are emerging some big players with more advanced products - just as Peugeot, Citroën, Renault, Mathis, and later SIMCA emerged in France as the mass producers. Smaller players rely too heavily on reworked versions of other people's cars - you might have seen the same thing in France in the twenties, where a Bignan might have actually been a Salmson in different clothes, or a BNC might've used a Delaunay-Belleville Chassis, or a Chenard-Walcker might've been a reworked Ford Pilot.
As in France, the industry trend in China will be towards consolidation, originality, and mass production.
China, of course, also has more of a history with cars than Korea. The first cars made in China to Chinese designs were built around the time of Dr. Sun Yat Sen's republic, but they were little more than one-offs. The industry really began in the 1950's with the Shanghai SH-760, the Hong-Qi, the He-Ping, the Jin-Bu, the Jingganshan, and the Xi'an-Jin. Surprisingly, some of the makers of these cars are still with us - Hong-Qi being most prominent. Shanghai is now Shanghai-VW and what was Jangganshan, named for Chairman Mao's first army base in the QingKang mountains, is now the Isuzu-affiliate Jiangling.
Ford also contemplated making cars in China but found Singapore to be a more suitable location - less instability in the 1910's and 1920's.
