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Chinese city limiting cars to fight pollution

http://www.statesman.com/business/ch...n-2450652.html

Quote:

Chinese city limiting cars to fight pollution

By Keith Bradsher
THE NEW YORK TIMES

GUANGZHOU, CHINA — It is as startling as if Detroit or Los Angeles restricted car ownership.

The municipal government of Guangzhou, a sprawling metropolis that is one of China's biggest auto manufacturing centers, introduced license plate auctions and lotteries last week that will roughly halve the number of new cars on the streets.

The measures have the potential to help clean up China's notoriously dirty air and water, reduce long-term health care costs and improve the quality of Chinese growth. But they are also imposing short-term costs, economists say, at a time when policymakers in Beijing and around the world are already concerned about a sharp economic slowdown in China.

... and what will happen is that , as usual , it will become a matter of having enough money to grease a palm somewhere to get a license plate.

That's actually the problem. China has anti-pollution laws. China has city planners. China has hordes of inspectors to make sure that everybody is following the rules. China also has a huge , huge , HUGE corruption problem. I don't mean that the president is corrupt but you can be sure that he paid the right people to get where he is.

I've seen it many times and it's just common knowledge. If you don't have the license you're supposed to have , out comes the cash. It's not even done inconspicuously.

For those not aware of how it actually works here , you don't have to worry about some terrorist paying the Chinese government for nuclear weapons or something. That's not the kind of corruption we're talking about. It's all the "little" things and because %99.99 of inspectors are taking money (that's WHY they want the job) you can't impose measures to fight big problems like pollution and so on.

So good luck Guangzhou. You'd have been better off to put the money into raises for inspectors and increased penalties for their corruption.