More Chinese cities may restrict vehicle purchases in a bid to fight air pollution and traffic congestion.
State media reported on Thursday that, with more than 13 million cars sold in China in 2012, motor vehicles and their emissions have emerged as the chief culprit for the air pollution in large cities.
Beijing, Shanghai and two other cities already curb the purchase of vehicles for private use, through lotteries and auctions of a limited number of license plates.
Shi Jianhua, deputy secretary-general of the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said eight more cities were likely to announce similar policies, including the port city of Tianjin near Beijing, the Chongqing metropolis in the southwest.
The China Daily newspaper quoted Shi as saying such restrictions might cut vehicle sales by 400 000, or two percent of total domestic sales, and have a “certain impact” on the country's economic growth.
GROWING DEPENDENCE ON CARS
China's increasingly informed and vocal citizens have successfully pushed the government to be more transparent about how bad the air in their cities is but, as they get richer, their desire for cleaner air conflicts with their growing dependence on cars. While China is the biggest car market in the world by number of vehicles sold, there is still plenty of room for growth as the country still lags far behind developed markets in terms of the ratio of cars to people.
Xinhua reported earlier this year that the number of vehicles in Beijing had increased from 3.13 million in 2008 to 5.18 million. Since the beginning of 2012 prospective buyers have had to enter a monthly draw to win a license plate. Each month, 20 000 lucky winners are chosen.
The number of people in the draw had reached almost 1.53 million by June 2013.
Zhao Jian, a transport expert at Beijing's Jiaotong University's School of Economics and Management, said extending restriction-on-ownership policies to other cities was unlikely to have much effect on pollution because there were already too many cars on the roads.
“The restrictions on car ownership in Beijing failed to achieve what the government wanted to see because the restrictions only slowed the growth in the number of cars. They didn't reduce the numbers of cars,” Zhao said.
“Even with proper enforcement, the policy still won't solve the air pollution problem, neither will similar measures in other cities,” Zhao said.
The Asian Development Bank said in its 2012 environmental analysis of China that vehicle emissions were compounded by a lack of effective public transportation, low emission standards and the slow development of energy-saving and clean automobile technologies - Sapa - AP