a few late new years eve afternoon random notes
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, random on January 25, 2009
- To whoever found their way here via a google search for “best part of Beijing”: The answer is very simple: Yanqing County.
- Ma washed some clothes in a tub in the kitchen next to the stove with a huge pot full of hot water. Wise move. Then not long after she hangs the clothes on the line outside, they sprout icicles. That was in the early afternoon.
- Sounds like all our neighbours have done a mad dash to the shops along the highway for more fireworks. Somehow it’s gotten quieter the last couple of hours. A few random bangs here and there, but nothing like the barrage around midday, even less than what I was hearing at 8 am.
- lzh and Ma have been hard at work preparing tonight’s banquet for at least an hour now. Something- past experience, perhaps- tells me to expect a work of culinary magic.
- Carrying two large buckets of water is easier than carrying one. Balance, you see.
- The air is a little hazier than it was this morning. I’m guessing that if the environmental protection boys test the air quality tomorrow, they’ll find the major pollutant to be cordite, and the same would be true of the rest of the Chinese cultural world (how does one describe the entire worldwide Chinese community? Oh, just did it… twice…)
- The inside of the fridge feels warm to me. Still, this time of year stuff is only put in there to keep it safe from the dogs and cat.
- Seems the wind is finally dying down. The sun has left all but one tiny corner of this room. I’m eyeing up firework detonating possibilities in the courtyard before it gets too dark. That fence Ba built around the centre complicates matters slightly, although it will make hanging strings of crackers more convenient. I’m thinking of those mortars, though, which need a flat patch- and which I’m a little more nervous with thanks to one three years ago that failed to shoot up in the air and instead exploded right next to my hand. Only minor injuries, though. That time.
I’ll have said this a thousand by the end of the week, and I’ve probably already racked up a few hundred of those, but:
Happy New Year, everybody! Hope the Year of the Ox/Bull/Cow/Bovine goes well for you all.
除夕
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on January 25, 2009
So New Year’s Eve is here- the Chinese edition, Spring Festival, that is. My tenth in China and fifth in Yanqing.
We came up to the village yesterday, and so avoided all the rush. But Bafangda seemed to be suspecting the same as us and had the Yanqing buses on a holiday timetable- meaning we were on a bus and on the road superquick. In fact, I think the bus they were just finishing loading as we arrived and the bus we got on five minutes later pretty much cleared out the “crowd”- well, it helped that ours was a big 50+ seater taken off the slow route along the side of the highway to relieve the expected crush on the fast buses.
Then we said to hell with it and just hired a car from Nancaiyuan.
The wind had stopped down in southern Chaoyang when we left, but was still blowing at Deshengmen, and it’s still going up here this morning. That caused us some trouble as we hung the couplets and 福 characters at about 9:30- couplets, being so long, were a particular problem, being blown off the walls before the glue could stick, or, in one case the sun had yet to reach, the glue freezing before the couplet could stick and the wind playing merry havoc. Then the last- Ba and I had an end each as we were carrying it to the gate post so that we could get it stuck fast both top and bottom before that norwester started playing its silly games, but the wind saw what we were up to and literally tore it out of my hand before we’d reached the gate, leaving me with a tiny slip of red paper. Nevermind, we recovered it and got it stuck.
Then, of course, I was on fuse-lighting duty, as always. I don’t know how I got this duty, but every Spring Festival I’m the one who lights the fuses. Anyways, Ma lit a cigarette (cigarettes are about the best thing for lighting fireworks- they’re small (unlike the corn stalk out of the kitchen stove I used one year) and they’re not bothered by the wind, unlike lighters and matches) and handed it to me, then grabbed three rolls of crackers and three mortars, and we chased the demons away.
At eight this morning it was only two degrees celsius inside. And eight am is a good time to get an accurate reading from the thermometer absurdly hung in the window, as the sun has yet to peak over the courtyard wall- at midday it’ll tell you crazy things like 35 degrees because it’s getting direct sunlight. I took the camera and wandered outside for a quick look-see. The early morning sun was painting the mountains behind the village subtly red, the Jundushan were clearly visible all the way to the Badaling area, beautiful. And cold. Within a couple of minutes I had to run back inside and find some warmth to restore the circulation to my hands. 
Uh, yeah, our camera has always had trouble with dates. The pictures we took in Dalian 3 years ago are all marked 2011. Ignore the date, that was taken this morning. Actually, I was going to tweak the photos a bit and remove things like wrong dates, but the light I have in this room isn’t much good for fiddling with photos.
So I’m going to spend the afternoon probably just sitting right here, adjusting the curtain so that the sunlight keeps me warm without affecting my ability to see what’s on this screen, relaxing. I am, however, looking forward to this evening, which will be fun.
killing off dirty cars
Posted by wangbo in Environment, news on January 23, 2009
新京报/The Beijing News’ Ma Li has an article reporting what seems to me, at first glance, reasonably impressive numbers of “yellow sticker” vehicles (i.e. high emission, badly polluting- 百度百科 says a “yellow sticker” vehicle is a petrol vehicle only meeting National I emissions standard or a diesel vehicle that does not reach National III) taken off the roads over the ten day period from 12 January. “Taken off the roads” (淘汰, eliminated) means said vehicles are reported as having been scrapped or transferred outside of Beijing. From January 1 such vehicles have been banned within the 5th Ring Road, and they’ll be banned within the 6th Ring Road from National Day (October 1). But here’s the cool part: It’s not just the city government issuing a ban. They’re giving out subsidies to people who can show that their “yellow sticker” vehicle has been either scrapped or transferred out of Beijing. And the subsidy depends partly on how soon you take your vehicle off Beijing’s roads.
黄标车10天淘汰576辆
576 yellow sticker vehicles eliminated in 10 days
其中报废274辆，预计节后将迎来淘汰小高峰
274 of those vehicles scrapped, peak in eliminations expected after the holiday
本月12日起，单位或市民如果将黄标车报废或转入外地，就可在各区县办事大厅的一站式窗口，申领补助资金。市环保局昨天发布，自12日以来的10天里，各区县已办理576件黄标车淘汰手续。相关负责人预计，春节后将迎来黄标车淘汰的小高峰。
From the 12th of this month, work units or citizens who either scrap or send out of Beijing their yellow sticker vehicles can go to a one-stop window in each district and county’s service hall to apply for a subsidy. The municipal Environmental Protection Bureau announced yesterday that in the 10 days from the 12th, the elimination of 576 yellow sticker vehicles had been processed in all districts and counties. The relevant person in charge expects there to be a peak in the elimination of yellow sticker vehicles after Spring Festival [i.e. Chinese New Year].
黄标车淘汰大兴区最多
Daxing District sees largest number of yellow sticker vehicles taken off roads
北京市规定，从今年元旦起，除保障城市生产生活和运行外，运输渣土等各类黄标车全天禁止在五环路以内道路行驶，10月1日起黄标车禁止在六环路内行驶。同时，黄标车如果报废或转出北京，都将获得政府的鼓励补贴。
According to Beijing city regulations, from January 1 this year, apart from vehicles ensuring the city’s production, life and function, every kind of yellow sticker vehicle, such as those transporting waste, are forbidden from driving within the 5th Ring Road around the clock, and from October 1 they will be banned within the 6th Ring Road. At the same time, all yellow sticker vehicles scrapped or moved out of Beijing will receive a support subsidy.
市环保局相关负责人昨天介绍说，本月12日到前天，共办理淘汰黄标车手续576件，其中转出北京的有302件，报废的有274件。在各区县中，大兴、通州、海淀办理黄标车淘汰的数量排在前三位，分别为105、75和65件。
The relevant person in charge at the municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday that from the 12 of this month up to the day before yesterday a total of 576 eliminations of yellow sticker vehicles had been processed, with 302 of those eliminations being moves outside Beijing and 274 scrappings. Among all the districts and counties, Daxing, Tongzhou and Haidian saw the three largest numbers of eliminations, at 105, 75 and 65 respectively.
报废数量高于预期
Scrappings more than expected
“从办理结果看，选择报废的黄标车数量比预期的要多，达到了将近一半。”这位负责人说，这主要是因为外地已逐步实施国Ⅲ排放标准，办理转出难度大。另一方面是市民环保意识的提高，自愿报废的人数增多。同时此次政府补贴力度较大，车主对补助额度比较满意。
“Looking at the results, the number choosing to scrap their vehicle were more than expected, nearly half as much more.” He said this was mainly because areas outside Beijing had progressively implemented the National III emission standard, making it difficult to shift vehicles out of Beijing. On another hand, citizens’ awareness of environmental protection had increased, and voluntary scrappings are increasing. At the same time, the governmental subsidy is higher, and vehicle owners are more satisfied with the amount of the subsidy.
这位负责人提醒车主，预计春节后会迎来黄标车淘汰的小高峰，相关车主应合理安排时间，尽快到各区县联合服务窗口办理相关手续。
The person in charge reminded vehicle owners that a peak in elimination of yellow sticker vehicles was expected after Spring Festival, and they should be reasonable in arranging a time and quickly go to the united service window of their district or county to undertake the relevant procedures.
■ 提醒
■ Reminder
黄标车越早淘汰补贴越高
The earlier you eliminate your yellow sticker vehicle, the higher your compensation
市环保局相关负责人称，北京黄标车淘汰政策是鼓励车主尽早淘汰，越早办理车主从经济上越合算。鼓励标准根据车型和年限，分两个阶段执 行。第一阶段的截止日是6月30日，在此之前淘汰的，鼓励资金最高可以到2.5万元，而从7月1日至年底淘汰的，鼓励资金最高为2.2万元。
The person in charge at the municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said that Beijing’s policy to eliminate yellow sticker vehicles encourages vehicle owners to eliminate their vehicle earlier, with earlier eliminations being more economically worthwhile. The standards for support are based on vehicle model and year and split into two stages. The first stage ends on June 30, and before this date the encouragement subsidy runs up to 25 thousand yuan, while from July 1 to the end of the year the maximum support subsidy will be 22 thousand yuan.
Yeah, so I used the phrase “to take off the roads” in my introduction, but the word “eliminate” in my translation. “Eliminate” is the dictionary definition and shorter and, to my mind, like “take off the road”, covers both scrapping and transferring out of Beijing.
what’s going on?
I just don’t get it. This norwester has been howling since late last night, hasn’t let up. Normally a norwester cleans out Beijing’s air, sends all the airborne nastiness down southeast. It was doing that all through this morning, but somehow this afternoon the air has only got greyer. And looking up, as up as I can see from my window, it’s not cloud, or at least, doesn’t look like cloud.
And one more thing about today’s weather I don’t get, but which I’m certainly not complaining about: Normally the norwester noticeably cuts the temperature in our apartment. Today, for some reason I can not fathom, the very modest gains we have made with the last couple of days of warmer less cold [filthy, dirty] breezes from the south and southeast we have managed to hold on to. Like I said, I’m not complaining, because the last norwester left us hovering on 15/16 degrees, and that only just climbed back to 17 last night (let me emphasise those are inside temperatures. The forecast high for today- outside- was minus 7), and it’s somehow holding, but this cold snap is supposed to last a couple more days…
…by which time we’ll be back in Yanqing, of course, and the temperature down here won’t matter a damn, because we’ll be in a situation where you can see your breath inside and some mornings you have to wait until the mop thaws before you mop the floor.
88小不是
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on January 21, 2009
The only thing I’m going to write to explain the title of this piece is that although W.’s name in Chinese is usually 小布什, I think 不是 is a better rendering. And I like how the pronunciation of both loosely approximates the English word ‘bullshit’.
I s’ppose there’s already a lot written on the Bush presidency, but I don’t really care. He’s gone. That’s good enough. And besides, I always had trouble seeing him as actually the president. I’ve always seen him as some kind of sinisterly clownish marionette, and I never quite could figure out who was pulling the strings. He wasn’t quite a figurehead, more like a make-believe president, the disarmingly absurd face of some obscure, malevolent beast. And I’m having trouble blaming him for anything he did wrong. I just don’t believe he has the introspection necessary to realise either that he screwed up or that he wasn’t really president. He reminds me of a Far Side cartoon in which some jumped up little dictator in a kitschy pseudo-military uniform is standing in front of a desk being informed by a psychiatrist that actually, he was Joe Bloggs and his whole dictatorship was just some psychological experiment- escept that Bush hasn’t made it to the psychiatrist’s desk yet, and I doubt he ever will. For me the “Bush presidency” is an abstraction somewhat akin to “Mitterand’s innocence in the Rainbow Warrior affair” or “Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone to assassinate John F. Kennedy”- a convenient, if somewhat translucent, fiction.
But on the whole, I think Arctosia has by far the healthiest response to the whole thing, in both English and Chinese editions.
I’m just glad the whole thing’s over.
注意安全
On the way home this morning, walking through the campus, I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching from behind, followed by the screech of tires as the driver suddenly locked the brakes. Looking around, I see a Jeep Cherokee whose driver had apparently forgotten until the last second that it’s generally a good idea to slow down before you hit the judder bars, especially when you’re about to hit a T-intersection which will force you to turn, and the road you’ll have to turn onto has more traffic than the one you’re on. As the Jeep turned, I saw printed in big, red characters across the back door of the Jeep:
注意安全
Pay attention to safety
Indeed.
black snow
Posted by wangbo in Environment, life in Beijing on January 18, 2009
It took a bit of scrolling through these photos, but I did manage to confirm that the “工大建国饭店” of the headline is the one in the southwest corner of my university’s campus. And I suspect that the second of the confirming photos shows why black snow would be falling in that area: The cars are parked right next to a coal-fired central heating plant.
And clicking through to page 2, I see right at the top the building I lived in from December 24, 2002 right through SARS to May of ’04. Two winters spent maybe 50 metres from that very central heating plant, and not once did I see any of this “black snow”. And I now live a few hundred metres north of there, and we haven’t seen any “black snow” up here.
But then the original poster, “蓝色幽灵” (Blue Spectre) leaves this odd little comment:
白天没有，只有夜里排
There’s none during the day, it’s only emitted at night.
Aha. Is management turning off some kind of emissions cleaning-up equipment overnight when nobody will notice? If so, they got noticed. And why would they do that? Would that save them money? Oh, later on there’s another comment from the original poster:
应该是有办法的，因为白天不飘黑雪，只到夜深人静时。
估计是锅炉房关闭了除尘设备。
There should be a way to deal with it, because during the day the black snow doesn’t float in the air, it’s only in the still of the night.
I reckon the boiler turns off the dust-removing equipment.
Yeah, that’s what I’d be thinking.
Anyway, like I said, I haven’t seen any of this “black snow”, but back when I lived just across the road from that central heating plant, and not this winter. But then again, I haven’t been down that way for a hell of a long time- which is odd, because one of my favourite local supermarkets is right across the road from that plant. Although, that plant’s chimney is clearly visible from most parts of the campus and it serves as my barometer on the many winter days I cross the footbridge over Xidawang Lu and enter the campus. The smoke is always white and I’ve seen no evidence of anything going wrong….
…but those photos clearly show there is a problem, and those two comments from the original poster seem to suggest that somebody in the plant may be playing silly buggers with the equipment installed to protect the local environment from the worst ravages of coal smoke, turning it off at night when nobody will notice, perhaps to save a bit of money.
Green Beijing
Posted by wangbo in Environment, news on January 17, 2009
京报网 has another piece pushing environmentally-friendly development in Beijing:
“绿色北京”为可持续发展助力
“Green Beijing” to assist sustainable development
作为今后一个时期推动首都经济社会又好又快发展的主要奋斗目标，建设“人文北京、科技北京、绿色北京”，是今年北京“两会”上最热门的话题。连日来，代表 们在讨论中纷纷表示，要把“绿色”理念融入到城市建设、产业发展、环境整治等经济社会发展的各个方面，让“绿色北京”建设为首都的可持续发展做出贡献。
As an important goal in the struggle to promote the capital’s good and rapid economic and social development, building a “humane Beijing, Science and Technology Beijing, Green Beijing” is the hottest topic at this year’s Beijing “Two Meetings”. Over the last few days, representatives have stated one after the other in the discussions that the “Green” principle needs to be included in every aspect of economic and social development, such as city construction, production development and environmental restoration, to allow “Green Beijing” contribute to the capital’s sustainable development.
生态涵养区应布局高端产业
Distribution of high-end industries in the ecological conservation district
“建设‘绿色北京’，首先是要保护生态环境。”市人大代表、怀柔区委书记王海平表示，作为生态涵养发展区的怀柔，今后将进一步明确责任感，下大力气保护水源和空气，为首都构筑绿色生态屏障。
“To build a ‘Green Beijing’ we must first protect the ecological environment”, representative to the municipal people’s congress and Huairou District committee secretary Wang Haiping said. As an ecological conservation development district, Huairou will further advance its clear-cut sense of responsibility, make great efforts to protect water resources and the air and build a green ecological protective screen for the capital, but we’re still very far from the goal to promote the region’s good and rapid economic development.
但对于生态涵养发展区来说，保护环境不是建设“绿色北京”的全部内涵，还要发展“绿色”产业。“如果地区经济不发达，人民生活水平上不去，对环 境的保护也不可能做到可持续。”因此，王海平建议，要在生态涵养发展区大力发展无污染、效益好的高端产业，“比如现在，我们怀柔已经有了中国电影数字基 地、中科院怀柔基地等一批高端产业项目，但距离推动地区经济又好又快发展的目标还远远不够，希望市委市政府今后在产业布局上，能够引导更多的高端产业往生 态涵养发展区聚集。”
But for the ecological conservation development district, protecting the environment is not the only connotation of “Green Beijing”. Green industry also needs to be developed. “If an area’s economy is not developed, the people’s standard of living can not be raised and protection of the environment can not be made sustainable.” Therefore, Wang Haiping suggests vigorously developing non-polluting high-end industries with good returns. “For example now Huairou already has a few high-end industrial projects such as the China Film Digital Base and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Huairou Base. We hope that in the distribution of industry, the municipal committee and city government can lead more high-end industries to gather in the ecological conservation development zone.”
绿地建设要兼顾市民休闲
Construction of green lands must consider citizen’s leisure
市人大代表、昌平林业工作站的周志军认为，建设“绿色北京”应该让市民更多地享受到绿化成果。他说，经过这么多年的植树造林，北京不管是林木绿 化率、森林覆盖率，还是人均绿地面积都已经大大提高了，但很多地方只是单纯的绿起来了，人却无法进去休闲，因为没有路，也没有任何配套的休闲设施。
Municipal people’s congress representative Zhou Zhijun of the Changping Forestry Work Station believes that building a “Green Beijing” should allow the citizens to enjoy more the fruits of greening. He said, after this many years of planting trees and building forests, Beijing has already greatly raised the rates of forest greening and forest coverage and also the per capita area of green land, but many places have merely been greened, while people have no way to enter and relax because there are no roads and absolutely no coordinated leisure facilities.
周志军建议，有关部门要在建绿地的同时，预留部分土地，建设旅游休闲配套设施。对于已经建成的人工林地，科学地加以改造，使之成为市民可以进去观光、休闲的森林公园。
Zhou Zhijun suggests that as the relevant departments build green lands, the set aside a portion of land to build tourism and coordinated leisure facilities. Transform artificial forests and scientific lands that have already been built and turn them into forest parks that citizens can go to for sightseeing and leisure.
他还建议，政府要加大对水源保护地的产业扶持力度，引导当地农民发展民俗旅游业，促进农民致富增收。
He also suggests the government needs to increase the strength of the support for the industry of water resources protection lands, guiding farmers in those areas to develop folk customs tourism, promoting the increase of farmers’ incomes.
倡导绿色生活方式
Propose a green lifestyle
“建设‘绿色北京’，离不开全社会的参与。”在小组讨论中，市人大代表、丰台区园林局绿化队生产组技术员李辉的发言引起了其他代表的共鸣。“比 如说我们身边的这些绿地吧，三分靠种，七分靠养，但现在园林部门的经费、人力都明显不足，如果大家都来积极地认养绿地，就可以解决这些问题。”
“To build a “Green Beijing” we can not depart from the participation of the whole of society.” In a panel discussion, municipal people’s congress representative and technician of the production group of the Fengtai District Park and Forest Bureau’s Greening Team Li Hui’ speech aroused the sympathy of the other delegates. “For example, these green lands by our side rely three tenths on planting and seven tenths on cultivation, but currently the funds and manpower of the park and forest departments are clearly not sufficient. If everybody actively takes care of the green lands, we can resolve these problems.”
市人大代表、北京大学环境科学与工程学院教授胡敏则呼吁大家从点滴小事做起，培养“绿色”的生活方式，“比如说节水、节电、节能，对垃圾进行分类，尽量选择公共交通出行……这些生活中的细节如果大家都做到了，那么距离‘绿色北京’理念的实现也就不远了。”
Municipal people’s congress representative and professor of Peking University’s School Environmental Science and Engineering Hu Minze called for everyone to start from small things to foster a “green” lifestyle, “For example, save water, save electricity, save energy, sort rubbish, to the best of your ability choose public transport when you go out….. If everybody does these details of life, then we won’t be far from the realisation of the “Green Beijing” principle.”
Wow, these political types have a diverse range of…. interesting…. ways with words, don’t they? I still can’t think of a coherent way to translate “生态涵养区应布局高端产业”. It’s the “布局” that’s causing the trouble. But perhaps I have subject, verb and object all arse-backwards? Perhaps “Distribution of high-end industries in the ecological conservation district” is better….. Yeah, think I’ll go change it now. Well, it still doesn’t look right, but at least it resembles English now.
And it’s surprisingly difficult to find official English names for the “园林局” and “北京大学环境科学与工程学院”, so I just gave up and made up my own English names. I mean, it’s not like anybody’s paying me to do this. And I’m not sure I’ve got the name of that professor right….. Oh well.
And wow, I spent two hours on this… Still, I was eating lunch at the same time.
Anyways, thought it was an interesting look at views put forward on Beijing’s sustainable development.
road closures
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, news on January 16, 2009
What’s missing from this article is a list of the roads affected…. but I’m sure notices will be posted in those neighbourhoods. Anyway, won’t affect me, I’ll be in Yanqing where we have a nice, large courtyard in which to set off fireworks. And I’m sure I’ll be the one on fuse-lighting duty, as I always am…. I’m not sure how I acquired that particular responsibility, but never mind, my fuse-lighting duty has so far resulted in only one very minor injury and the mild shock inherent in being far too close to a small explosion.
Uh, but yeah, that article: 93 roads and 7 squares in the vicinity of 105 communities within the Fifth Ring Road will be closed from 11:45pm on Chinese New Year’s Eve/January 25 for half an hour until 12:15am January 26 so that people can let off the traditional New Year fireworks. Departments such as the police, traffic management, and fire brigade are cooperating on this, and the emphasis seems to be very firmly on providing a safe space for people to set off their fireworks. There will even be fire department patrols clearing out flammable materials before fires start and ready to stamp out any fire as soon as it begins.
The only clues as to what roads and squares will be closed for fireworks duty are that most of the roads closed are in Dongcheng and Chongwen Districts, with Chongwen having the largest number at 24. The district with the least closed roads is Chaoyang, with a mere 9. Apparently most of the squares to be closed are in Fengtai, and here we do get two names: 如家世界北广场 and 大瓦窑村空场. I’m not sure if there may be any English names, so if you’re in Fengtai and near those squares (Fengtai is a pretty big district) I hope you recognise at least the Pinyin: Rujia Shijie Bei (North) Guangchang/Square and Dawayao Cun (Village) Kongchang/Square.
Huh. 大瓦窑村- Beijing’s Les Tuileries?
Anyways, it may well be worth your while to look out for road-closure notices posted in your neighbourhood. I mean, you might as well join in the fun, and if your neighbourhood has one of these safe firework zones, better to do it there where help will not be far away.
As for those of us who will be out in the countryside, we are fortunate to have so much more space available for such things. And although I’ll most likely be the one lighting fuses, my father in law will be close by, and we’re both pretty careful with such things. I just hope we don’t get stuck with poor-quality fakes like that time I blew my hand up.
sales tax cut on low emission vehicles
Posted by wangbo in Environment, news, tilting at windmills on January 15, 2009
Sorry, but I’m in a kind of tiredness that saps my ability to concentrate, so I might take a lot longer to write up this post than usual, and may make more than a few mistakes, but the headline really grabbed my attention, and the first paragraph or two raised the question:
Just how many contradictory birds can be killed with one stone?
Some of the article strikes me as either dead boring or completely irrelevant (irrelevant to any of my interests, that is), so I won’t translate the whole thing, just look at the points that seem salient to me.
The big news is a cut of 5% on sales tax on vehicles with an engine capacity of 1.6 litres or less. That is a halving of said sales tax, from 10 to 5%. The reasons given are:
为培育市场，稳定和扩大汽车消费需求，规划提出，从今年1月20日至12月31日，对1.6升及以下排量乘用车减按5%征收车辆购置税。目前，车辆的购置税是10％。
To nurture the market, stabilise and broaden demand for cars, the plan proposes that from January 20 to December 31, sales tax on low emission passenger vehicles with an engine capacity of 1.6 litres or less will be cut by 5%. Currently sales tax on such vehicles is 10%.
Yes, as you can see, I have added a fair bit into the English to help me make sense of the whole thing. Please correct me if I have misinterpreted anything.
But this raises questions in my mind:
- How firm and direct is the connection between engine size and emissions? I mean, I know smaller engines are generally more fuel efficient and therefore emit less exhaust, but surely fuel efficiency is a matter of “bang for your buck”? Surely a well-designed 2.5 litre V6 could be just as efficient and emit as little as a rough-as-guts 1.6 litre straight 4? Or is there a point (say, 1.6 litres) at which engine size = low fuel consumption = less emissions regardless of all other considerations?
- Clearly the 1.6 litre/low emissions thing is about cutting vehicle exhaust and therefore air pollution. But how do you encourage buying of cars (albeit low-emission vehicles) while cutting air pollution?
I’m asking these questions because I really don’t understand the engineering and science that would explain these things.
But there’s also good news for the rural population:
此外，根据规划，从今年3月1日至12月31日，国家安排50亿元对农民报废三轮汽车，低速货车换购轻型载货车，以及购买1.3升以下排量的微型客车，给予一次性财政补贴。同时，增加老旧汽车报废更新补贴资金，并清理取消限购汽车的不合理规定。
In addition, according to the plan, from March 1 to December 31, the state will arrange 5 billion yuan in one time only subsidies to help farmers discard tricycles or trade in low quality vehicles for new light commercials, as well as buy light passenger vehicles of 1.3 litres or less. At the same time, subsidies for trading in old vehicles will be increased and unreasonable rules limiting the purchase of vehicles will be cleaned up or cancelled.
Notes: “Tricycles” most likely refers to three-wheeled motor vehicles of a similar design to utes/pick up trucks, used to carry stuff mostly in rural areas, but also around the fringes of cities. “Light commercial” is the term I remember from New Zealand referring to utes/pick ups, vans, and similar such vehicles designed for commercial/stuff carrying purposes, but smaller than even light trucks. It seems to fit what is written in Chinese. As always, corrections are most welcome.
“Unreasonable rules limiting the purchase of vehicles”? What rules would that refer to?
Now, among four measures to be adopted for car producers, the article mentions;
今后三年，中央安排100亿元专项资金，重点支持技术创新、新能源汽车发展等；实施新能源汽车战略。
Over the next three years the central government will set up a special fund of 10 billion yuan focussed on support for innovative technologies and development of new energy vehicles and the realisation of a strategy for new energy vehicles.
中央安排补贴资金，支持节能和新能源汽车在大中城市示范推广。
The central government will set up subsidies to support the popularisation of energy saving and new energy vehicles on the large- and medium-sized city scale.
Subsidies for fuel efficient and new energy cars, that’s pretty damn awesome.
Now here’s what I don’t get: Selling more cars means more cars on the road means (unless the new cars are all of the zero emission kind) more air pollution, regardless of how fuel efficient they may be. Even if they are all zero emission, they’re still adding to the kind of gridlock that is already holding back the economy in places like Beijing (no, I don’t have statistics to back up that last claim, please correct me if I’m wrong). And yet this new set of measures seems to be aimed at both boosting the economy and improving the environment. Clearly more sales of domestically produced cars will help China’s economy, but more cars equals worse gridlock equals brake on the domestic economy; and more cars (unless they’re zero emission) equals more air pollution. And yet there’s a clear emphasis on low emissions and new, more environmentally friendly technology. I am struggling to see how all these competing demands balance out.
And I have to admit to my own particular contradiction: My wife and I would love to buy a car, and a Suzuki SX4 would seem to meet best our particular requirements for price, size, and space, and falls within that 1.6 litre limit…. Although, we have not done any more research than looking and thinking, hey, that’s pretty cool and about the size and price we want. Basically we would want something with space for a small family, small enough for city life and cut down fuel bills and emissions, big enough for getting across the mountains to Yanqing. So if we had the cash, we’d be right smack in the middle of the target of these measures. And quite possibly by mid-year we will have the cash to put down a deposit…… But I really don’t want to add to the already noxious air pollution and terrible traffic….. but I would love the freedom of crossing the Jundushan in my own car, taking the back roads, playing round a bit….
So I’m a little conflicted about the whole thing.
And let me just emphasise that every question I have asked and everything I have mistranslated is a call for answers. If you can help me better understand these issues, leave a comment.