I don’t have time to translate this whole piece in 新京报/The Beijing News. It’s got far too much political fluffle, for starters, and I’m meeting a colleague for lunch soon. But there is one sentence here I really like the look of:
对节能环保型汽车要实行消费税优惠政策，提高大排量汽车消费税率。
Implement a preferential policy on consumption tax for energy saving, environmentally friendly cars, raise the rate of consumption tax on high emissions car.
Now, I’m getting hungry and I don’t have a lot of time, and so I could well be chronically misinterpreting that sentence or overlooking some important detail in the rest of the article, but if I read that sentence rightly, that is one collossal step forward.
Oh, and I should add that that article is not about cars specifically, but about saving oil and electricity in general. Such things as aircon and lighting also get a mention. Makes one suspect there’s a lot of truth in certain reports (thanks Danwei). But even if there is enough coal, energy efficiency is still the only smart way to go.
