Guangzhou is seeking to ease traffic congestion and curb pollution by limiting the number of vehicles on the road.
It has suspended the registration of all new and used small and mid-sized vehicles this month and the monthly registration of such vehicles will be capped at 10,000.
The move, announced at the weekend, makes Guangzhou the fourth mainland city to impose a quota system on car purchases.
All registrations, including secondhand filings, are suspended this month to give the authorities time to work out further details of the plan. That includes how a breakdown of the quota will limit private, corporate and government car purchases.
Small and mid-sized passenger vehicles are defined as not longer than six metres, with a seating capacity of 19 or fewer.
Since 2007, the number of such vehicles in the city has risen by an average of 19 per cent a year. That raises their total to 1.67 million, lifting the total number of all vehicles in the southern metropolis to 2.41 million by the end of May. Significantly, road capacity has increased by just 2 per cent over the past five years due to a lack of land and funding for road building.
