beyondbrics

To get a taste of the negative consequences of the Chinese economic growth story all one needs to do is take a short drive in the country’s capital.

The bumper to bumper gridlock that clogs Beijing’s streets has become as legendary among regular visitors as the thick pall of air pollution that blocks out the sun and obscures the tops of medium-sized buildings.

Poor city planning and a mad rush by Chinese consumers to own their own cars have surely already allowed Beijing to claim the latest Chinese superlative with the title of “most congested city on earth”.

Since the start of this year the number of cars on Beijing’s roads has increased by more than 700,000, to 4.71m and in recent weeks the city has been adding new cars at the rate of more than 3,000 per day, according to official figures.

A government study predicts that there will be well over 7m cars in the city before 2015, when the average speed of traffic in the city will be 15km per hour, or about the pace of a leisurely jog.

Of course, with air quality deteriorating in tandem with the increased number of cars, anybody who does decide to jog rather than drive is likely to quickly expire from respiratory ailments.

Even Chinese leaders, who have special lanes set aside for their motorcades at all times of the day, appear to have finally realized the resulting damage to the economy and the city’s image.

The Beijing government has just announced draft rules that include limiting car purchases and usage, improving traffic management, building underground bypasses and encouraging people in the former land of bicycles to revert to pedal power.

The city is also considering congestion fees and introducing further restrictions on the days people are allowed to drive, on top of the current rules that ban drivers from using their cars one day a week depending on the last digit of their license plate.

The draft rules are vague and appear to fall far short of the more robust measures that have helped limit chronic congestion in other large Chinese cities such as Shanghai.

To preserve its leafy pedestrian-friendly central districts – the famous French Concession for example – Shanghai operates a draconian license plate regime.

In the whole month of November, the city restricted license plate issuance to just 8,500, charging an average of Rmb45,200 per plate. That compares with the Rmb500 Beijing charged for each of the 21,000 plates it issued in just the first week of this month.

Letting only rich people drive is not very socialist, but would you rather live in a place where vehicular happiness is distributed unevenly or somewhere like Beijing where the misery is distributed equally?