Shanghai General Motors Co announced over the weekend that it has appointed Cai Bin, a former executive of SAIC Motor Corp, as the new deputy general manager of the joint venture and will report directly to Ding Lei, active general manager of the company.

Cai Bin, joined SAIC in 1993 and was once a marketing executive at Shanghai VW. He took the position as director of quality control and economic operation dept of SAIC since 2002.

Meanwhile, Sun Xiaodong, former deputy general manager of Shanghai GM, will replace Cai to become director of quality control and economic operation department of SAIC.

Sun joined Shanghai GM in 1997 as director of Shanghai GM's marketing department and began to serve as deputy general manager of the company since August 2007.

Shanghai GM experienced its first year-on-year decline of 8.3% in car sales last year, with 458,642 units being sold. Car sales in the first quarter of 2009, however, increased 12.9% from the fourth quarter of last year to 117,000 units.