By KEITH BRADSHER

SHUANG MIAO, China - Li Rifu packed a lot of emotion into his first car. Mr. Li, a 46-year-old farmer and watch repairman, and his wife secretly hoped a car would improve the odds of their sons, then 22 and 24, of finding girlfriends, marrying and producing grandchildren.
A year and a half later, the plan seems to be working. After Mr. Li purchased his Geely King Kong for the equivalent of $9,000, both sons quickly found girlfriends. His older son has already married, after a short courtship that included a lot of cruising in the family car, where the couple stole their first furtive kisses.
“It’s more enclosed, more clandestine, said Li Fengyang, Mr. Li’s elder son, during a recent family dinner, as his bride blushed deeply.
Western attention to China’s growing appetite for automobiles usually focuses on its link to mounting dependence on foreign oil, escalating demand for natural resources like iron ore, and increasing emissions of global warming gases.
But millions of Chinese families, like millions of American families, do not make those connections. For them, a car is a symbol of success and can lead to a better life.
J. D. Power & Associates calculates that four-fifths of all new cars sold in China are bought by people who have never bought a car before - not even a used car. That number has remained at that level for each of the last four years.
China’s explosive growth in first-time buyers is the driving force behind the country’s record car sales, up more than eightfold since 2000. It is the reason China just passed Japan to become the world’s second-largest car market, behind the United States.
One change in Chinese attitudes is already clear and likely to have broad implications worldwide: even first-time buyers are becoming more sophisticated and want better cars. China’s domestic carmakers like Geely and Chery, once feared by Detroit and European automakers as eventual exporters to Western markets, have watched their sales stagnate even while the overall Chinese market has continued to grow roughly 20 percent a year.
The beneficiaries have been the joint ventures of multinationals that sell cars here that are designed overseas, like the Buick Excelle, Volkswagen Jetta and Toyota Camry. Practically every auto expert had expected the multinationals to lose market share rapidly to low-cost domestic automakers.
Instead, Chinese car buyers, including first-time buyers, have become more discriminating about the comfort, styling and reliability of the cars they buy. As a result, instead of planning to conquer overseas markets, local manufacturers are having to redouble their efforts in this market.
“Customers are moving up, they want the bigger, more established brands, said Michael Dunne, the managing director for China at J. D. Power, a consumer ratings company. “They’d rather wait, save and buy higher on the ladder instead of buying a smaller car.
Back in the fall of 2006, the Li family did not want to wait to buy their new car.
Mr. Li is the embodiment of China’s version of the American dream. He is largely self-taught. He learned to fix watches, and got a job as a foreman in a coal mine in nearby Anhui Province by fixing the mine owner’s watch. After saving some money, he came home to start a successful business that raises flowers for landscapers.
“Without this car, my two sons wouldn’t be able to find wives - the girls would not marry them, he said, recalling that when he courted his wife in the early 1980s, he needed only a bicycle.
Car ownership helped Mr. Li bid for bigger contracts for more flowers. “My customers said, ‘Wow, you came to visit me in a car’ - it puts the negotiation on a whole different level, he said.
Several months after he bought the car, Mr. Li’s elder son, Fengyang, did indeed find a girlfriend, Jin Ya, a beautiful young saleswoman for China Mobile, a cellphone service. In the space of five months, they had gone to the local marriage registry and been legally wed. Today, both say they want a child someday.
At the recent family dinner, Ms. Jin bridled at the idea that young women in China consider a man to be marriage material only if he can take them on dates in a car.
“Not me, not me! she said passionately, before reluctantly acknowledging that “other girls do say that you need a car.
But as their car was bringing the Li family new joy - Mr. Li’s increased business, Fengyang and Ya’s courtship - tragedy struck: Li Rifu and his wife, Chen Yanfe, were each found to have cancer.
Ms. Chen’s reproductive tract cancer has gone into remission after $7,000 in medical bills. But Mr. Li’s fist-size malignant prostate cancer tumor has resisted two operations and four rounds of chemotherapy. The cost: more than $40,000. He will soon go to a leading hospital in Shanghai for more surgery, a five-hour drive to the north . But he will not be going in the family car: he sold it for nearly $8,000 last year to help cover his medical expenses.
Despite it all, Li Rifu tries to remain optimistic. “If I get another car, he said, “I’ll get a better-quality car, with even nicer seats and better steering.