Hitting jackpot in car license lottery gets easier

China Daily, January 26, 2011

Beijing's transport authority announced the rules for Wednesday's lottery for car license plates, the first since the city decided in December to restrict the number of cars in a bid to ease traffic jams.

Some 210,000 people submitted application forms in the first eight days of January, but more than 22,700 were turned down because they did not meet permanent residency and other requirements, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport said on Tuesday on its website.

As a result of the disqualifications, the eligible applicants' chances of getting a car license plate in Beijing in Wednesday's lottery are about one in 10, up from one in 12 as earlier estimated.

The commission said 187,420 applicants were ruled eligible to compete for 17,600 license plates prepared for private car buyers this month. They will be represented by codes in the drawing.

Six people will be selected from a group of supervisors, including representatives of applicants and deputies of the municipal people's congress, who were invited to watch over the drawing, the commission said.

Each of the six will then draw a number randomly to form a seed number. That seed number will be put into a pre-designed computer program to produce 17,600 codes that represent the applicants.

As a show of fairness, the commission will broadcast the drawing on TV and the Internet starting at 10 am on Wednesday, Li Xiaosong, the commission's spokesman, said.

The results will be posted online 25 minutes after the drawing is completed. Applicants also may call a hotline, 12580, in an hour to find out the result, the commission said.

The commission did not make public the pivotal computer program, which some worried might lead to the manipulation of the lottery.

A Beijing resident surnamed Yang, who holds a master's degree in mathematics, said it is easy to produce a certain code by designing the computer program.

"And it will not be easily found out by the public, unless the authority publishes the computer program and promises it is exactly what they used in the computer for the drawing," he said.

Others don't care about the fairness of the process any more because they were disqualified and face a lengthy delay in obtaining a license.

"I will have to wait between two to three years until I become qualified," said an employee surnamed Li at a Japanese company in Beijing. He referred to the requirement that applicants without a Beijing hukou (registered permanent residency) provide tax records for at least five straight years.

Li said he had been jobless previously, resulting in a two-month gap in his tax record.

Beijing announced the lottery plan to curtail traffic congestion on Dec 23, 2010. As of late December, the number of vehicles in Beijing exceeded 4.8 million, and the number of licensed drivers in totaled at least 6.25 million.

The commission said 240,000 new license plates will be disseminated for free this year, 20,000 each month.