GUANGZHOU China (Reuters) - Chongqing Changan Automobile Co Ltd (>> Chongqing Changan Automobile Company Ltd), the Chinese partner of Ford Motor Co (>> Ford Motor Company), expects sales to reach 2.8 million units next year compared with about 2.55 million units forecast for 2014, its president Zhang Baolin said on Thursday.

Zhang said he expected China's auto market to grow around 6 percent in 2015, a similar pace to this year's growth, he told reporters at the Guangzhou autoshow.

Changan Auto, which also partners with Japanese carmaker Mazda Motor Corp (>> Mazda Motor Corp) and French automaker Peugeot SA (>> PEUGEOT), sold a total of 2.1 million vehicles during the first 10 months of the year, up 22 percent from a year earlier.

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada; Editing by Adam Jourdan)