In analyzing the factors that have led China to move up in the international competitiveness of manufacturing industry, a number of studies have focused on its trade dimension. Contrary to these studies, this research examines the role of the Chinese automobile manufacturing industry in China`s upward shift in the TFP. This study measures the efficiency and productivity of the Chinese automobile manufacturing industry by adopting the Data Envelopment Analysis and Malmquist productivity index model, which uses the relative distance function in the production possibility frontier. The data used is the automobile manufacturing industry firms from Data Stream DB from the sample period of 2005 to 2011 for 9 countries (G7+Korea and China). The sample period is divided into two eras of 2005 to 2008 and 2008 to 2011, since Global financial crisis occurred in 2008. This study finds that the efficiency of the Chinese automobile industry has substantially improved after 2008. The Change of TFP is about 14% per year before 2008, and its major factor is catch-up effect. However major factor of improvement in the Chinese automobile manufacturing industry`s TFP appears to have changed from catch-up effect to technical progress effect after the global financial crisis in 2008.