SHANGHAI (Reuters) - General Motors Co (>> General Motors Company) and its Chinese joint ventures sold 319,936 vehicles in China in September, up 15.2 percent from a year earlier, the U.S. automaker said on Friday.

That follows a 14.0 percent year-on-year rise in August and a 12.7 percent rise in July.

The company's sales in the first nine months of the year totaled 2.58 million vehicles, up 11.6 percent from the same period a year earlier.

GM plans to invest $12 billion in China between 2014 and 2017 and build five more plants to ramp up its manufacturing capacity, its China president Matt Tsien said at the Beijing auto show in April.

GM makes vehicles in China in partnership with China FAW Group Corp [SASACJ.UL] and SAIC Motor Corp Ltd (>> SAIC Motor Corporation Limited).

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada; Editing by Brenda Goh)

Stocks treated in this article : SAIC Motor Corporation Limited, General Motors Company