Some companies, like Geely, are looking for more government grants to help them develop hybrid gasoline-electric cars and other cutting-edge technologies for which research spending may be cut if sales do not recover.

But Zheng Qinghong, the general manager of Guangzhou Auto, one of China’s largest and fastest-growing automakers, said that the Chinese industry needs the government to help consumers become enthusiastic again about buying cars. Retail sales have dipped a couple percentage points to 750,000 a month; sales were still rising at an annual pace of 24 percent a year ago. “The best way is to boost growth in demand” for cars, through steps like lower car taxes and lower fuel prices, he said in an interview.

Western multinationals would probably benefit at least indirectly from any government initiative to help China’s auto industry, because Western companies are required to do business through joint ventures with Chinese automakers, most of which are partly or entirely government owned.

Jeffrey Shen, the chief executive and president of one of these joint ventures, the Changan Ford Mazda Automobile Company, said that he did not know how the government would help, but that some steps were inevitable. “I’m sure it will come,” he said, with both extra assistance for research and greater availability of loans.

The renewed willingness of state-owned banks to lend money to the auto industry this autumn is in contrast with the United States, where General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have found banks and other investors leery of lending to them.

Government-mandated lending quotas, not interest rates, tend to be the most important limit on bank lending in China. Regulators have begun easing the quotas this fall after four years of fairly tight quotas imposed in an effort to control the growth of the money supply and limit inflation.

Direct loans from the government of the sort under discussion in Washington are not needed in China, Mr. Zheng said. “For now, the Chinese auto industry doesn’t need saving” in the same way as the American industry, he said.