Auto sales in China, the world's largest car market, rose 14.1 percent year-on-year to a record high in November, an industry group said Tuesday, citing solid demand for passenger vehicles.

A total of 2.04 million vehicles were sold in China last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said in a statement.

That brought the number of vehicles sold in the first 11 months to 19.86 million, up 13.5 percent year-on-year and surpassing the 19.31 million units sold in the whole of last year.

Japanese brands continued to recover from their downturn in 2012, when tensions reached fever pitch because of a sovereignty dispute over islands in the East China Sea.

Sales of Japanese passenger vehicles reached 325,400 units in November with a 19.2 percent market share, CAAM said, citing "relatively rapid growth in both month-on-month and year-on-year terms".

China has proved to be the saviour of many foreign car companies in the face of weak demand elsewhere.

US auto giant Ford announced last week that its sales in China jumped 47 percent from a year earlier to 99,157 vehicles in November.

Its counterpart General Motors said earlier this month that November sales increased 13.3 percent year-on-year to 294,500 vehicles.