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Guo Tao has been waiting for 14 years to buy a car of his own, having drawn the lottery 85 times without winning once.

"The probability of my situation happening is even lower than the chance of winning the lottery," said Guo Tao, who has never missed a lottery since Beijing issued the lottery policy for motor vehicle purchases in 2010. From six draws a year to two applications a year, he has "never missed a draw," but he has always been a little bit unlucky.

The further you go, the slimmer the chance of success. The number of applicants for the lottery keeps increasing, but the number of winners is decreasing, and the average winning rate of the lottery continues to decline. By June 2024, when the latest lottery in Beijing ended, more than 624,000 families and 2.59 million individual applicants competed for 9,600 ordinary passenger car quotas, of which more than 60% were won by "car-free families" and the individual winning rate was one in a thousand.

The restrictions on car purchases have gradually turned around, and the car purchase restriction policy is being relaxed to varying degrees. Since the beginning of this year, policy documents such as "optimizing car purchase restrictions in accordance with local conditions", "encouraging cities with purchase restrictions to relax vehicle purchase restrictions", and "optimizing car purchase restriction management" have been issued intensively. The "2024-2025 Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plan" issued by the State Council recently clearly proposed to gradually cancel the purchase restrictions on new energy vehicles in various places.

The phrase "gradually cancel" replaced the previous phrases "optimize" and "relax", which is a clearer statement. Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Conference, told China News Weekly: "Gradually canceling car purchase restrictions is already a clear policy direction."

At present, only Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Hangzhou and other cities have implemented different degrees of total control on the purchase of new cars, and these megacities and super-large cities are often the main battlefields for automobile consumption. What these cities urgently need to consider is: how to make a choice between stimulating consumption and solving congestion? And if it cannot be cancelled quickly, how to optimize it?

Millions of lottery draws

After 14 years of lottery, Cheng Xin finally got a quota for a family new energy passenger car one year after her daughter was born.

According to the Beijing "new lottery policy" implemented in January 2021, in addition to individual lottery and waiting, a new way to obtain quotas based on "car-free families" has been added. According to the family total points formula, newborns can not only contribute basic points, but more importantly, the "family generational" coefficient has been increased, and the total points have been doubled. Many young families like Cheng Xin ended their long lottery wait because of the arrival of their newborns.

Beijing is the only city in China that has implemented purchase restrictions on both fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles. The annual quota for passenger cars has remained at 100,000 since 2018. On the other side of the strict control of ownership, there is a large army of 624,000 families and 2.59 million individual applicants for the lottery.

"I expected the purchase restriction policy to be very strict, but I didn't expect it to be so difficult to win by lottery." Before the opening of Metro Line 16 in 2016, Guo Tao had to commute between the West Second Ring Road and the North Fifth Ring Road every day, more than 20 kilometers each way, and driving to and from get off work was undoubtedly the most convenient option at the time. In order to increase his chances of winning the lottery, he followed the advice of his "winner" friends and changed his contact address to outside the main urban area, changed his application phone number, and even thought of using "evil tricks" to apply for a disability certificate, "which would double the chance of winning the lottery, but it was too extreme, so I thought about it and gave up."

Wang Du, assistant to the president of the China Automobile Dealers Association, calculated that taking Beijing as an example, even for applications for new energy vehicles, which have a higher winning rate, a family would still need to wait in line for six years, and an individual application would require about 35 years.

Because his personal score was not high, he had to wait until 2040 to wait for the lottery, so Lu Yi took the risk and rented a license plate. For Lu Yi, who started his own business in 2022, a car was a necessity. At that time, he did not expect that he would be entangled in a lawsuit because of this.

On the morning of March 26, 2024, Lu Yi was awakened by a phone call in his sleep, and was told that the court enforcement bureau was about to tow the car away. When he rushed to the community parking lot in confusion, there was only an empty parking space with a tow mark. Later, he contacted the owner of the license plate and learned that the other party had an economic dispute with the lender because of the failure to pay back the money in time, and the mortgaged house was reduced in price due to the real estate downturn. As a result, the car registered under his name was seized and was about to be auctioned.

Lu Yi did not dare to delay for a moment and fought three lawsuits in the past six months. From the rejection of the execution objection to the withdrawal of the execution objection lawsuit, he recently filed a title confirmation lawsuit after consulting relevant judges and lawyers, requesting to stop the auction on the grounds that he has ownership of the car. "If I lose the case, I can only admit defeat," Lu Yi said.

The risks brought by renting a license plate are two-way. Sun Li, a lawyer at Dali Law Firm in Beijing, told China Newsweek that not only the lessee faces risks, but the lessor is also very likely to encounter situations such as the lessee failing to pay the rent on time, not returning the license plate after the expiration date, running away with the license plate, and being required to bear joint and several liability in the event of a major accident.

According to Sun Li's observation, cases of disputes arising from renting license plates first appeared around 2013, when Beijing had just implemented the purchase restriction policy for more than two years, and the peak period was between 2017 and 2021. In recent years, due to the cancellation of license plates, lessors have been relatively cautious in filing lawsuits, and similar cases have shown a downward trend.

"The negative effects of the purchase restriction measures are enormous. They are not conducive to boosting consumption, nor to social equity." Wang Du said that there are pressure and helplessness from government departments, as well as complaints and expectations from ordinary people, and even heated debates between car owners and non-car owners. Various underground transactions surrounding a pair of license plates often occur.

"Car purchase restrictions have led to many problems, such as inconvenience in residents' travel, speculative car purchases, and increased difficulty in motor vehicle management." In his report "On the Origin, Current Situation and Economic Benefit Measurement of the Car Purchase Restriction Policy" published in March this year, Guan Qingyou, director of the Ruishi Financial Research Institute, analyzed that due to the difficulty in obtaining car purchase qualifications in Beijing, behaviors such as "using unregistered cars" and "renting license plates" have been repeatedly banned, adding a lot of costs to motor vehicle management out of thin air.

Beijing was once the city with the largest sales of new cars in China. In 2010, when the purchase restriction policy was announced, the number of motor vehicles in Beijing increased by 790,000, and the queues were as long as 4,000 kilometers, accounting for about 2/3 of the total mileage of Beijing's urban roads at that time. The rapid increase in the number of cars far exceeded the city's expectations, and the side effects soon appeared. According to data from the Beijing Transportation Development Research Center, the average daily congestion time in Beijing in 2010 increased by 55 minutes compared to 2009. In December 2010, there were as many as 1,134 sections of Beijing's frequently congested roads during the evening rush hour on weekdays.

Previously, Beijing had also taken traffic restriction measures to ease traffic congestion. After the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing began to implement a five-day traffic restriction policy, and vehicles were stopped one day a week according to the last digit of the license plate. While the congestion was significantly alleviated, it further stimulated car consumption. Many families bought a second car to circumvent the restrictions, and the effect of the policy gradually disappeared. In 2010, Beijing began to implement car purchase restrictions, and the lottery began in January 2011. Car buyers must meet the threshold conditions and obtain quotas through the lottery. At that time, Beijing added 240,000 quotas each year, which was reduced to 150,000 in 2014, and further reduced to 100,000 in 2018.

After 14 years of purchase restrictions, as the number of applicants continued to increase, the winning rate of the lottery has dropped. In the past two years, as the purchase restriction policy has tilted towards new energy vehicles, some people have suggested that Guo Tao change to "applying for new energy vehicles as a family unit." He calculated that there is no point advantage in waiting for new energy vehicles. "After so many years of lottery, the winning rate of oil vehicles is higher. If I switch to new energy vehicles, I will have to wait another 20 years."

Suppressed consumption

“Looking back on the past decade or so of car purchase restrictions, it was like an invisible hand pressing down on the car market,” Wang Du admitted.

Wang Du once wrote a special article to analyze that the car purchase restriction was originally a temporary administrative measure implemented when the rapid growth of car consumption exceeded the city's carrying capacity. The purpose was to alleviate urban traffic congestion, but it also suppressed a large amount of car consumption demand.

As early as 1994, when the number of motor vehicles in Shanghai was less than 100,000, it took the lead in trying to implement the policy of auctioning private car license plates. By 1999, the total number of private cars auctioned in Shanghai was only 11,000. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, Shanghai's civilian vehicle ownership ranked only 16th among all provinces and cities in the country at that time, and the policy regulation effect was remarkable.

Since then, Shanghai has continuously improved its auction rules, forming a "purchase restriction" model that is completely different from Beijing. The purchase of fuel vehicles depends on bidding, while the purchase of new energy vehicles has fewer restrictions. In terms of car purchase qualifications, Shanghai is similar to Beijing, but slightly more relaxed than Beijing. This has allowed Shanghai to demonstrate its amazing consumption power of new energy vehicles in the past period of time. The relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Municipal Economic and Information Commission once publicly introduced that in the first 11 months of 2023, the promotion volume of new energy vehicles in Shanghai reached 303,000 vehicles, the market penetration rate reached 65%, and the cumulative promotion volume reached 1.316 million vehicles, ranking first among major cities in the world in terms of total promotion volume.

"Based on the consideration of promoting energy conservation and emission reduction and alleviating traffic congestion", at the end of 2023, the Shanghai Municipal Government Office forwarded the "Shanghai Implementation Measures for Encouraging the Purchase and Use of New Energy Vehicles" formulated by the Municipal Development and Reform Commission and other five departments, raising the threshold for applying for "green license plates". The biggest adjustment is that individuals who used to own fuel vehicles could apply for "green license plates", but now they can no longer apply.

The "increased" purchase restrictions have affected consumer enthusiasm. Cui Dongshu calculated in the article "Analysis of the Regional Market of New Energy Vehicles in June 2024" that as of now, Shanghai has sold 116,000 new energy vehicles this year, a year-on-year decrease of 24%. This is in sharp contrast to the 33.1% increase in the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in the first half of the year.

After Beijing issued the purchase restriction policy in 2010, seven other provinces and cities followed suit. These purchase restriction areas are precisely the consumer markets with the greatest purchasing power.

"The biggest negative impact of purchase restrictions is that it limits consumer demand for millions of cars." Guan Qingyou once calculated that as of the beginning of 2022, the demand for more than 7.8 million cars was restricted in the eight regions that implemented purchase restrictions at the time.

The pent-up demand for cars has not disappeared, but has sprouted in cities without purchase restrictions. Take Chengdu, for example. Since there is no lottery, it has become one of the cities with the fastest growth in car consumption in China. Public data shows that in 2003, Chengdu had only 345,000 cars; in 2015, it surpassed Chongqing and rose to second place in the country; in August 2023, the number of cars exceeded 6.3 million, surpassing Beijing to top the list.

The number of cars in some cities with purchase restrictions has lagged far behind other cities without purchase restrictions. The latest data from the Ministry of Public Security shows that as of the first half of 2024, there are 20 cities with a car ownership of 3 million to 5 million, of which only 1/5 are cities with purchase restrictions, namely Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Tianjin. Cities with a car ownership of 5 million to 6 million are Shanghai, Suzhou and Zhengzhou, and only Shanghai has purchase restrictions. Cities with a car ownership of more than 6 million are Chengdu, Beijing and Chongqing, and only Beijing has purchase restrictions.

According to Guan Qingyou's calculations, if the upstream and downstream economic benefits are not taken into account, the complete abolition of the car purchase restriction policy will theoretically generate more than 560 billion yuan in consumption. In other words, if the most radical relaxation of the purchase restriction is adopted, all the squeezed demand for more than 7.8 million cars will be released, based on the average transaction price of all used car transactions in December 2021 of 71,800 yuan, it will release about 560 billion yuan in consumption, accounting for about 0.49% of the total national GDP in 2021.

"The more important significance of relaxing purchase restrictions in many places is to stimulate the automobile consumption market." Cui Dongshu told China News Weekly that considering that license plate resources are no longer scarce after the restrictions are lifted and some speculative demand is eliminated, he estimates that if the 500,000 to 600,000 license plate quotas in restricted cities are released in an orderly manner, it may bring in sales of 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles, which will play a positive role in boosting the auto market and promoting the recovery of consumer confidence.

"It is also a major area that is gradually relaxing purchase restrictions. Compared with the real estate market under the policy orientation of 'housing for living, not for speculation', the driving effect of the automobile industry chain cannot be ignored." Li Ming, professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Automotive Engineering of Jilin University, gave an example that in 2023, the national new home sales will be about 11.7 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.5%; the automobile sales in the same period will be about 10.1 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12%. The growth momentum of automobile consumption is obviously stronger.

The decline in housing prices is a good opportunity for the auto market to promote consumption. Li Ming analyzed that the current consumer spending cannot support continued high debt, and the "price war" in the auto market has led to lower and lower product prices. In addition, cars are typical long-cycle durable consumer goods, and the release of car replacement demand lasts longer. If the relevant cities lift the purchase restrictions, it will greatly boost auto consumption.

"However, stimulating the auto market by simply relaxing purchase restrictions is difficult to sustain." Li Ming told China Newsweek that lifting purchase restrictions will stimulate auto sales growth in the short term, but in the long run, the key is to raise consumer expectations, which requires more policy support, including reduction or exemption of purchase tax, car sales in rural areas, old car trade-in and financial services, and other policy measures.

The game between consumption and traffic congestion control

Guiyang, which was the first city to cancel its car purchase restriction policy, soon encountered congestion again.

In the second year after the policy was untied, Guiyang's congestion during rush hour was ranked second in the country, second only to Beijing. According to the traffic data of 100 cities across the country in the second quarter of 2021 released by Baidu Maps, Guiyang ranked first in the country in the congestion list of cities with a car ownership of 1 million to 2 million.

"Controlling congestion" has once again become a difficult problem that Guiyang City "pays great attention to". Guiyang has set up a special task force for congestion control, led by the leaders of the Guiyang Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government. They have organized many special meetings and dispatch meetings to sort out and identify 32 congestion points, and mobilized relevant municipal departments, local public security bureaus, special police, grid police and other police types to support and participate in traffic diversion. After three years, the congestion ranking was brought back to 25th in the country.

"The purchase restriction policy is like shock therapy, which allows time for the development of urban public transportation." Liu Daizong, chief representative of the Institute of Transportation and Development Policy in East Asia, told China Newsweek that purchase restrictions are not a long-term solution to air pollution and traffic congestion. The mainstream thinking of major international cities is to vigorously develop public transportation and limit the use of private cars, rather than restrict purchases.

Most cities with purchase restrictions have not made sufficient preparations to lift the restrictions in the past decade.

Liu Daizong observed that many cities in China are still at the stage of "simply relying on increasing the supply side of road traffic infrastructure construction to ease urban traffic congestion", but soon found that the more roads were built, the more congested they became, and the more parking lots were built, the more difficult it was to park. The root cause is that the scarce land in the core area of ​​the city is provided to cars at a very low cost, which will only attract more vehicles and further aggravate congestion. "Traffic demand management must be carried out to reduce the city's dependence on cars in order to solve the root cause."

"Too many cars does not necessarily lead to congestion." Liu Daizong gave an example. In 2020, the Tokyo metropolitan area in Japan had 36.91 million people and 16.23 million motor vehicles. Compared with half a century ago, the population has increased by nearly 100%, and the number of motor vehicles has increased by 7 times. Instead of being crowded to the point of collapse, road traffic has become smoother. In short, the main approach is to regulate the demand for car ownership and use by focusing on parking management.

Liu Daizong introduced that in 1962, Japan introduced the "Garage Law", which stipulates that car buyers must have parking spaces, and spent decades carrying out the "street sweeping campaign" to strictly prohibit illegal parking. By 2021, there will be only 5.43 million built-in and public parking spaces available for use among the 78 million cars in Japan, accounting for only 7% of the total number of cars. Buying cars with parking spaces, strict parking enforcement and high parking fees, and taking multiple measures to reduce the ownership and use of cars in urban centers, while vigorously developing rail transit to solve public travel. In 2018, the proportion of rail transit and bus travel in the central area of ​​Tokyo was as high as 51%, and the proportion of car travel was only 11%, which is much lower than the proportion of car travel in the central areas of Beijing, Shanghai and other cities.

"Auto use management requires a combination of economic, legal and other means, and cannot be separated from strict supervision and enforcement. However, the underlying mechanism for automobile use management in China has not yet been fully established. In this case, lifting purchase restrictions will undoubtedly aggravate congestion." An expert in the transportation field who declined to be named pointed out that the current discussions advocating lifting purchase restrictions are mostly from a consumption perspective, bypassing the core difficulties in managing congestion. In this case, automobile consumption and congestion management have become a problem of "adding noodles to excess water and adding water to excess noodles". If we only focus on purchase restrictions, congestion will not be cured, and may even lead to more social problems such as mismatched resources.

Cities without purchase restrictions are also exploring feasible ways to manage usage. Chengdu has the largest number of cars in China, but it is not the most congested city in China. The "2023 China Urban Traffic Report" released by Baidu Maps and several research institutions shows that Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, which have implemented purchase restrictions, are still among the top five most congested cities, and the congestion index has increased by at least 11% compared with the previous year, while Chengdu did not even make it into the top ten.

"The key to alleviating traffic congestion is not to limit the number of cars, but to control the total mileage of cars." Liu Daizong emphasized that the number of cars in cities without purchase restrictions has increased, but reducing the mileage of cars through macro or micro control can also effectively alleviate congestion.

According to a report released by the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design in June this year, Chengdu's road network density is 8.6 kilometers per square kilometer, while Beijing's is only 5.9 kilometers per square kilometer. A higher road network density means that cars can have more roads to travel, reducing the probability of traffic jams. Chengdu's roads are also expanding outward in a circular shape, and the accessibility of Chengdu's roads is relatively better. This is reflected in public transportation, with fewer transfers and a higher proportion of direct trips in Chengdu, which objectively increases the attractiveness of public transportation.

More importantly, some cities without purchase restrictions tend to rely more on usage management and public transportation to solve traffic congestion. In December 2020, Nanchang City cancelled the restriction measures on local and non-local motor vehicles with the last digit of the license plate. By the end of 2022, the number of civilian cars in the city increased by 220,000, and the traffic congestion index decreased instead of increased. According to the relevant person in charge of the Nanchang Municipal Transportation Bureau, this is inseparable from the construction of the public transportation system and the support of intelligent traffic management methods such as the "city brain".

"In the long run, we should not use total volume control as the main means, but should choose more economic means to solve the congestion problem from the perspective of usage." Cheng Shidong, director of the Urban Transportation Center of the Comprehensive Transportation Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, told China Newsweek.

Explore orderly relaxation

During the 2019 National People's Congress, Xu Liuping, former chairman of China FAW Group, suggested that relevant local governments lift the car purchase restriction policy. The National People's Congress handed this suggestion to the governments of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities for study and handling.

Two months later, the Hangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau responded that the legal basis for Hangzhou's purchase restrictions was the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law, which stipulates that local governments can take effective measures to control and reduce the total amount of air pollutant emissions. The primary source of pollution in Hangzhou is motor vehicles. After the implementation of the car purchase restrictions, by the end of 2018, pollutant emissions had decreased by a total of 17,100 tons compared to 2013.

Since then, the focus of cities' relaxation of purchase restrictions has fallen on new energy vehicles. On May 29 this year, the State Council issued the "2024-2025 Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plan", which mentioned accelerating the elimination of old motor vehicles, raising the energy consumption limit entry standards for operating vehicles, gradually canceling restrictions on the purchase of new energy vehicles in various places, and implementing supporting policies such as facilitating the passage of new energy vehicles.

Currently, only Beijing has set a limit on the number of new energy vehicles, but the quota is gradually leaning towards "green license plates". According to the notice issued by the Beijing Passenger Car Index Regulation and Management Office, the passenger car quota in 2024 will remain at 100,000, the same as in 2023. But in detail, the quota for new energy vehicles has increased by 10,000 from 2023 to 80,000.

Not long ago, Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission announced that it would issue 20,000 new energy passenger car quotas to car-free families on July 21 to gradually meet the car needs of car-free families. The top-ranked shortlisted families have a total score of 60 points, with three generations participating. The earliest registered family members started the lottery in 2012.

"Canceling car purchase restrictions has now become a consensus of the entire society, including the government, industry, and consumers." Wang Du said that last year's Central Economic Work Conference clearly proposed to focus on expanding domestic demand and give priority to restoring and expanding consumption. Restrictive policies in the consumption field that hinder the release of consumer demand should be eliminated.

Driven by multiple rounds of policies, some cities with purchase restrictions are relaxing the conditions for purchasing new energy vehicles in an orderly manner. The "Shenzhen Action Plan for Promoting the Replacement of Old Consumer Goods for New Consumer Goods" issued by Shenzhen on May 27 proposed to cancel the social security restrictions on non-Shenzhen residents applying for new energy car incremental quotas, and relax the conditions for individuals who only have one car registered in Shenzhen to apply for hybrid car incremental quotas. That is, individuals who already have a Guangdong B-plate car can also apply to purchase another hybrid car. Previously, consumers who purchased new energy vehicles in Shenzhen needed to pay social security in Shenzhen for more than 24 consecutive months.

Under the premise of keeping the total amount unchanged, the purchase restriction policy itself is also constantly being optimized. In 2021, Beijing's "new lottery policy" gives priority to solving the car ownership needs of "car-free families" by giving them a significantly higher winning rate for ordinary quotas and a quota for new energy quotas than individuals. Among them, through a three-year transition period, the proportion of new energy passenger car quotas allocated to "car-free families" has gradually increased from 60% to 80%.

In the process of exploring relaxation in various places, "long-time unsuccessful applicants" and "car-free families" are also important breakthroughs. Among the measures to optimize passenger car control implemented by Tianjin this year, the car-free family quota was implemented for the first time, with 30,000 ordinary car quotas allocated to car-free families and 10,000 ordinary car quotas allocated in a step-by-step lottery for applicants who "long-time unsuccessful applicants".

"Encouraging cities with purchase restrictions to relax vehicle purchase restrictions" is also a direction that relevant authorities in many countries have repeatedly mentioned in their policies this year.

On July 1 this year, the "Guangzhou Passenger Car Index Control Management Measures" came into effect, which proposed that the allocation quota for ordinary car incremental quotas is 80,000 per cycle, which will be evenly distributed on a monthly basis. Individuals who have participated in the incremental quota lottery for more than 72 times can directly apply for ordinary car incremental quotas without occupying the allocation quota. There is no quota limit for energy-saving car incremental quotas and new energy car incremental quotas.

As early as last year, Hangzhou City issued and implemented the "Notice of the Hangzhou Municipal Transportation Bureau and other six departments on the release of several policy measures (trial) to benefit the people's livelihood and optimize other indicators for passenger cars". It clearly stated that eligible people who have not won the license plate lottery for a long time, talents, individuals from families with many children, and key enterprises can directly apply for passenger car indicators. The Hangzhou Municipal Control Office said that it will actively pay attention to and study the implementation of last year's new policy, and optimize the control policy in a timely manner according to the implementation effect.

"Cities with less than 4 million cars can gradually relax their license plate restrictions," Cui Dongshu said. From the perspective of promoting consumption, it is an inevitable trend to relax restrictions on car purchases, especially for new energy vehicles. He also said that at this stage, megacities such as Shanghai and Beijing already have a high number of cars, and urban traffic pressure is relatively high, so objectively, there are no conditions to completely lift restrictions in one step.

Previously, the National Development and Reform Commission also emphasized in a consumption promotion document it released that local governments that have already implemented car purchase restrictions should accelerate the transition from restricting purchases to guiding use. At the same time, they can demarcate congested areas, and in principle no purchase restrictions will be imposed on areas outside congested areas.

"The purchase restriction policy can be relaxed first in the outskirts of the city." Cheng Shidong also suggested that the parking space supply in low-density urban areas is relatively sufficient, and the basic conditions for parking management and strict law enforcement are in place. When relaxing purchase restrictions and increasing passenger car quotas, local governments can give priority to groups with greater needs or areas with lower current car ownership.

Liu Daizong believes that there are many areas of high-intensity development in the city centers of major cities around the world, but not every such area is "immensely congested". Only by ensuring that car ownership and use follow the distribution pattern of "low in the center and high in the periphery" can congestion be effectively alleviated. This cannot be achieved by developing public transportation alone, but also requires effective regulatory measures, which are the prerequisite for lifting purchase restrictions.

"After more than ten years of exploration in practice, now that software and hardware technology and urban supporting facilities have developed to a higher level, we should come up with a more scientific and economical long-term urban traffic management plan." Wang Du said that the transition from restricting car purchases to managing car use requires comprehensive regulation through legal, economic and technological means.

(At the request of the interviewees, Cheng Xin, Guo Tao, and Lu Yi are all pseudonyms in this article. Intern Xiang Meilin also contributed to this article)

Published in the 1152th issue of China Newsweek magazine on August 12, 2024

Magazine title: Why is it so difficult to relax restrictions on car purchases?

Reporter: Li Mingzi