"Nowadays there's an excess of cars. In the past, only vice-governors and higher got official cars, but now, even low-level officials are farting fumes." Huang Huahua, the governor of Guangdong Province said recently at a meeting of political advisors. This points to a hard battle that both the central government and local departments need to fight - the regulation and reform of official cars.
Reforming the official car system may not seem like a big deal compared to other grand and urgent reforms that we are facing, but it's a chronic problem. Many years of effort have achieved nothing. In fact, not only was there no substantial success, but the problem has worsened.
The main cause of this abuse is privilege. The failure to halt it can be traced back to the lack of determination to restrain privilege.
The regulation of the numbers and usage of official cars is not just aimed at solving traffic congestion, but to deal with the regulation of power, the transparency of public finance and government corruption.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has said before to the press that the problem of official car abuse "should be regulated and must be regulated." He talked about the "two substantial rules," the openness and transparency of government and the other is democratic supervision.
Owning one private car can make people happier. But if they can see official car abuse being regulated and feel power being restrained by supervision, that happiness will be deeper.
