6,544 win Guangzhou license plate lottery

In Guangzhou, 6,544 people are being allowed to register to have license plates put on new cars after they won in the first round of a lottery in the Guangdong provincial capital on Monday.

Of those who entered the contest, 11.2 percent came away with the right to have a license plate placed on a new car, meaning the chances of winning in the Guangdong lottery were four times greater than those who took part in a similar drawing in Beijing.

In all, 58,405 people signed up to participate in Guangzhou's contest.

Guangzhou this month introduced a system to govern the issuance of license plates for new cars. Through it, some plates are distributed through a lottery and some through a public auction.

In July, the city set a limit on the number of licenses it would grant for new cars, saying it would distribute no more than 120,000 of them to local residents, companies and organizations each year.

Xian Weixiong, director of the Guangzhou Commission of Transport, said the city plans to allocate 60,000 license plates using a lottery and another 48,000 through auctions.

The remaining 12,000 allowed under the limit will then be set aside for new-energy and environmentally "green" cars and will also be distributed through a lottery.

The first round of the public auction will take place on Tuesday. The initial bidding price in the event will be set at 10,000 yuan.

"The money raised from auctioning these license plates will only be used to develop the city's public transport system," Xian said.

The limits on vehicle registration have come in response to the rapid increase seen in the number of cars on Guangzhou's roads in recent years, said Xian, who is also deputy chairman of the Guangzhou Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Xian said his commission plans to put a priority on "green" public transport systems by increasing the number of buses that run in the city and further improving Guanghzhou's subway services in the coming months.

Heavy traffic is hampering the economy's growth, worsening air pollution and frustrating many drivers in Guangzhou.

Congested traffic has reduced the average driving speed to less than 20 kilometer1s per hour on more than 27 percent of the city's chief roads and streets.

According to data from the city's traffic police department, more than 2.5 million registered cars were traveling Guangzhou's streets by the end of June. The city is home to about 16 million people.

Guangzhou has become the fourth city on the Chinese mainland to place limits on car registrations, following Beijing, Shanghai and Guiyang, Guizhou province, in that regard.