Lin Min

AS China marks the 20th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s historic tour of South China that revived stalling reforms, many have pointed out the country is today at a crossroad — with reforms losing momentum — just like 20 years ago.

While reforms had been put on hold by leftist ideology before Deng’s tour put them back on track, it is vested interest groups that are now standing in the way of further reforms. Guangdong Governor Zhu Xiaodan said recently that vested interests pose the biggest hindrance to reforms.

And vested interests are almost omnipresent after two decades of unprecedented reforms have created nouveaux riches, powers-that-be and beneficiaries of various privileges. One thing that signifies the need for reforms is the excessive fleet of government vehicles that is wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money.

Early this month, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said each government vehicle should be banned from the road one day a week. However, it later emerged that this is not mandatory. It was also discovered that four years ago, the State Council issued a similar rule but it has never been enforced.

Although public anger about wasteful spending on official cars has existed for years, the exact number of public vehicles remains a puzzle due to lack of transparency. To date, only a few cities including Beijing have disclosed the numbers.

Last year, Du Liming, a member of the country’s top political advisory body, the CPPCC, said it costs between 150 and 200 billion yuan (US$23.8-31.75 billion) a year to maintain the country’s 2 million government cars (not including vehicles owned by public schools, hospitals, State-owned enterprises and the military). The real number of cars, however, is said to exceed this. He also disclosed, citing research by the NDRC, that two-thirds of the mileage of government vehicles was taken up by private errands. This means “corruption on wheels” costs at least tens of billions of yuan in taxpayer money each year.

In Hong Kong, the SAR government owned 6,303 vehicles as of July 1 last year, including 1,774 special ones such as street-cleaning and rubbish-collecting vehicles.

But in Beijing, the number of government cars reached 62,026 as of the end of 2010. The Shenzhen government has never disclosed the number of official cars, but a Shenzhen Special Zone Daily report unwittingly revealed the long-kept secret last year when reporting that government cars were banned from the road to improve traffic and air quality during the Universiade. The report said the government would seal more than 24,000 cars temporarily, accounting for 84 percent of the total. That means the number of government cars in Shenzhen exceeded 28,500, which is smaller than the Beijing figure but greatly dwarfs the Hong Kong number.

According to the Shenzhen Municipal Finance Commission, a public car costs 38,000 to 55,000 yuan to maintain annually. That translates to between 1.08 billion and 1.5 billion yuan for maintaining a fleet of 28,500 cars each year, the huge cost of purchase not included.

Besides squandering huge sums of public money, government cars aggravate traffic congestion and air pollution in most major cities. Shenzhen’s air quality improved markedly during the Universiade last year, partly thanks to the large number of State-owned cars banned from using the road.

It can be imagined how government officials and employees enjoy the private use of public cars without scrutiny. It is also expected that they would be unwilling to see this long-standing freedom and benefits curtailed. But the free-wheeling use of public vehicles has to be stopped, better sooner than later.

The first step in a war on “corruption on the wheels” should be disclosing the number of cars used by every department. A reform is then needed to slim down the fleet and stem out widespread private use.

China’s two decades of rapid growth would not have been possible if Deng had not silenced the leftists. Now, without touching the unfair privileges of vested interest groups, reforms won’t be possible to bring about social equity, transparent and frugal governance, as well as balanced social and economic development.

(The author is editor of the Shenzhen Daily News Desk.)