The government in southwest China's Guangxi region has urged General Motors and Shanghai Automotive Industry Co. to help their joint venture in the region to speed up development of a new sedan.

Located in Liuzhou of Guangxi, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., also known as Wuling for short, is a 50.1-34-16.9 joint venture between SAIC, GM and Liuzhou Wuling Automotive Co.  At present, it only makes minivans and the Chevrolet Spark small car.

At the ground breaking ceremony held in late July for capacity expansion at the joint venture's plant in Liuzhou, Ma Biao, vice governor of Guangxi, expressed his hope that the capacity expansion could be utilized to accelerate the construction of a sedan project at the company.

At a media briefing on Sunday this week, GM China's president and managing director Kevin Wale told Automotive News China that "Guangxi has made that request many times." But he declined to specify about the project.

According to a document posted on the Web site of the Guangxi government, the R&D about a mid-sized sedan project codenamed GP50 has already begun at SAIC-GM-Wuling. The document also says, the project will have an annual production capacity of 100,000 units once completed.

Sources say the mid-sized sedan will be based on the Buick Excelle platform.

Chinese media say Guangxi government is willing to trade the 16.9 percent stake it holds in SAIC-GM-Wuling for GM's support of the GP50 project.

But at the press briefing Wale said: "We are stratified with our share in Wuling."