On December 29, the Shenzhen municipal government announced that the city would implement restrictions on car purchases in a bid to ease traffic congestion.
This announcement was unexpected, especially considering in September, when the number of cars in Shenzhen reached three million, government officials said the city would not implement a license plate restriction policy.
City officials promised to hold public hearings if such a policy were to be implemented.
Before the official government announcement, on Monday at 5pm, a copy of the document was posted on Sina Weibo by a Shenzhen netizen. According to the document only 100,000 new vehicle license plates will be issued annually and of that 20,000 plates will go solely to electric cars.
Once the official announcement was made it also became clear the new policy would take effect at 6pm the same day - only an hour after being made public. This left very little time for any potential car buyers to beat the rules.
Chen Huigang, deputy director of the Traffic and Transportation Commission, stated that half of the license plates will be decided by lottery and the rest will be allocated by auction.
The restriction will last for five years.
Shenzhen is the eighth city in China to restrict car license plates. The other seven cities are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Guiyang, Shijiazhuang and Hangzhou.
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