“Stable growth is much better for us,” Toshiyuki Shiga, the chief operating officer of Nissan, said at a news conference at the Guangzhou auto show, which closed on Monday.

The biggest question in the car industry is whether more cities will follow Beijing’s example and impose restrictions on car registrations. Shanghai has restricted registrations for many years to prevent its ancient streets from becoming overwhelmed. As a result, it has one-third as many registered vehicles as Beijing, even though the populations of the two cities are similar.

That leaves Guangzhou, the sprawling commercial hub of southeastern China, as potentially the country’s largest single market in the coming year. With Toyota, Honda and Nissan all operating joint ventures in the city, Guangzhou has nearly caught up with Shanghai as the largest car manufacturing hub in China.

Gridlock is not yet a crippling problem in Guangzhou, or in many smaller cities across the country. City leaders are leery of discouraging car sales.

“At the current time, Guangzhou does not have plans to follow Beijing’s new limit on the issuance of car license plates in 2011,” said Chen Haotian, a vice director of the city’s powerful Development and Reform Commission. “Our city has a very good subway system, which should help to alleviate big traffic jams.”

Guangzhou had severe traffic jams a decade ago, but moved more quickly than Beijing to build a subway network that opens 30 kilometers, or 20 miles, of new lines each year. Traffic flows more smoothly in the city than in Beijing, although Guangzhou still had to impose restrictions on who could drive, based on license plate numbers, during the Asian Games, which just ended.

Beijing represents a little less than 5 percent of the Chinese car market. While sales in Beijing looked as if they would plummet next year, growth in Guangzhou and smaller cities should make it possible for the Chinese car market to continue expanding, analysts said.