It's mostly the import taxes... A Ferrari 458 will run you almost 720K USD (about 3x of what it is in the US). And you see them quite frequently.
Re:Tesla Q1 earnings report [pdf]
by seanmcdirmid on Wednesday May 07, 2014 @09:47PM
(#7713577)
China has high taxes on luxury cars, so they really are 2 or 3X the cost of the states (especially if imported). However, at least outside of Shanghai, registration costs are low (well, in Beijing we have the lottery), so you'll still see a lot of low end Chinese brands flying around.
When I was in Singapore, I got the impression that it was very different there, all the cars were quite nice.
If its just high registration costs, you'd expect to see a lot of higher end cars since there is not much point to pay $50K just to buy a $20K car.