Great Wall Motors, China's largest sport utility vehicle (SUV) producer based in Hebei Province, has defied an industry slowdown that began early last year, according to a report from Chinese business magazine Caixin.

The company sold 620,000 vehicles in 2012, up 28 percent from 2011, well beyond the industry average increase of 4.3 percent, according to the report. Its share price jumped 103 percent on the Shanghai bourse in 2012, marking the largest increase among China's publicly held automakers.

Great Wall Motor's recipe for success lies in its unswerving pursuit of profit. Instead of branching out to create many lines of products with uncertain profitability, Great Wall maximized the productivity of each production segment and focused on its best-selling models such as Haval, an SUV brand that held 14 percent of the country's SUV market share in 2012.