As part of an anti-corruption campaign and to cut expenditures, China is reforming its current practice of providing free car usage to government officials.

Central authorities are mapping out a detailed plan for effectively preventing officials using government cars for private purposes while guaranteeing their transport needs for official reasons, said an official source in Beijing.

Many officials and even ordinary civil servants enjoy the privilege of using government cars at no charge.

Statistics show there were more than 3.5 million government cars in service at the end of the 1990s.

Car maintenance and the cost of drivers added up to 72 billion yuan (US$8.7 billion) between 1991 and 1995, and soared to about 300 billion yuan a year at the end of last century.

A survey among the residents of seven major cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou shows more than 95 percent of respondents supported an immediate reform of government car use.

Some local governments have taken the lead to introduce such reform.

The Nanchang District Government of Wuxi City in eastern China's coastal province of Jiangsu has already auctioned off all its cars and started to pay transport subsidies to its officials.

In Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, the government has ruled that all official cars are to be manufactured domestically and each automobile is to be shared by 15 civil servants.

The rules says government cars are to be purchased from designated sellers and should be use at designated service centers and gas stations.

While generally welcomed by the public, not everyone has embraced the reform.

Mao Shoulong, a professor with the Beijing-based Chinese People's University, noted that reforms enable some officials to earn 3,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan in transport subsidies, even higher than their monthly salaries.

"Many ordinary people will find it hard to accept this, " he said.

Moreover, as officials of different ranks enjoy different car use standards, it is almost impossible for the central authorities to set a unified subsidy standard to be applied nationwide, said Mao.
 
(Xinhua News  Agency  March 1, 2004)