Global Times - The Beijing government held its first car license plate lottery Wednesday, a measure introduced just last month in a bid to tackle the capital's spiraling congestion problem.
Less than one tenth of the original 210,000 applicants received license plate qualifications after going through a lottery-like selection process.
The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transportation, which introduced the new measure in December 2010, selected the applicants Wednesday under the supervision of authorities including deputies to the Beijing People's Congress, according to a report on China National Radio (CNR).
The Beijing Traffic Management Bureau revealed that over 210,000 people applied online to enter the lottery, of whom 187,420 were qualified. Only 17,600 applicants ended up gaining license plate qualifications.
Under the new system, only 240,000 new license plates will be issued this year, less than one third of the 900,000 new cars registered in 2010.
Zhou Zhengyu, deputy Secretary General of the Beijing Municipal Government, said that the government is working on new measures to give families without cars more opportunities to be selected, said the CNR report.
He Wen, a 25-year-old female bidder who failed to get a license plate in Wednesday's selection, said she was not surprised or disappointed.
"Both my husband and I took part in the selection to raise our chances of success, but we knew how small our chances were."
Shi Qixin, a professor of traffic planning at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times that it is unlikely that the measure would spread, as "the traffic congestion in most cities in China is not even comparable to major cities like Beijing and Shanghai."
