Busted by Beidou: Satellite tracking pins down Hunan officials misusing government cars

Party discipline officials in Yueyang using vehicle monitoring service to keep tabs on civil servants' private use of government cars

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A Long March-3C carrier rocket carrying a satellite blasts off from the launch pad at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Xichang, southwest China's Sichuan Province in 2012. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 2:15pm, 25 Mar 2014Updated: 4:25pm, 25 Mar 2014

Graft busters in Yueyang, Hunan province are using China’s home-grown satellite navigation system Beidou to monitor private usage of government cars - a once-common practice among civil servants that’s now a target of an anti-extravagance campaign.

Months after the system was introduced, party discipline officials in the city say they have "nearly rooted out" the abusive usage of government vehicles, thanks to Beidou.

“We have basically killed this practice,” Chen Shaodong, a spokesman at the city’s party discipline office, told the South China Morning Post today.

By installing the Beidou tracking system in the city’s 4,100 government-owned vehicles, graft busters can monitor the whereabouts and route of each car, a task that once extremely difficult, if not impossible.

A lone Chinese cyclist face a traffic dominated by automobiles in Beijing, China, Thursday, June 15, 2006

A sticker showing that the car is government-owned is applied to the front of all vehicles, Chen said. This is done to encourage citizens to report to discipline officials if they believe the car is being used for private purposes.