Small-engine cars will likely be making a return to Beijing's streets by next month, after a seven-year ban that kept them off many of the city's major roads.

 

By the end of March, all local cities are required to allow small autos to run freely and lift any bans restricting their use, according to the State Council's deadline.

 

A group of governmental officials, industry insiders and national legislators pushed the move at Thursday's seminar organized by Beijing-based Economic Daily.

 

After continuous attempts to remove restrictions in more than 80 cities nationwide, the central government issued the ultimatum last December, which said that "local cities should lift any restrictions on small-engine cars by the end of March" to fulfil the country's campaign of building up resource-saving society.

 

"The restriction (on use of small cars) is not in line with the situation that resources become scare and oil prices run up," Xie Fuzhan, vice-president of the State Council Development Research Centre, said at the seminar.

 

Small-engine cars are defined in China as those with emission capacity of 1.0 litre or lower.

 

Since the central government issued the notice, some cities have already taken action. Shanghai has allowed all cars to run on the city's roads if they meet environmental standards.

 

But Beijing has remained unchanged. Since 1999, low-discharge cars have faced a ban on the Second and Third Ring Road's fast lanes and on Chang'an Avenue. Beijing Municipality adopted the ban to "reduce traffic jams" and to "maintain the image of the city."

 

But since last summer, the central government has been determined to encourage the use of small-engine cars.

 

Chinese will be encouraged to buy low fuel-consumption cars to help strengthen environmental protection and help out in terms of city traffic and energy saving, said the State Council said in its auto industry development policy.

 

However, industrial insiders said more room still exists to improve the quality of the small-engine cars, which are mainly produced by domestic makers.

 

A survey from China Association of Product Quality has shown that the cheaper the cars are, the more likely to get into complaints by buyers.

 

Of all the cars sold in 2005, more than 40 percent of them priced below 50,000 yuan (US$6,250) per unit received complaints by drivers because of quality problems.

 

For the cars sold at 150,000-200,000 yuan (US$18,750-25,000), the complaint rate was 21.1 percent, and for those higher than 300,000 yuan (US$37,500), the rate was 12.9 percent.

 

(China Daily March 11, 2006)