China's Zhejiang Province recently announced unified logos which will be labeled on public sector vehicles. With the name of public service departments and a supervisory telephone number on each car, the campaign is set to enable better public supervision over the use of government cars, local media reported on Saturday. 

In fact, up to 17 provincial level governments have launched campaigns to label public service vehicles as part of the plans to deepen vehicle reform, which began in July 2014 with the aim of slashing unnecessary fiscal expenses, the Beijing News reported.

An auction for public sector vehicles was held in Chongqing in April. /VCG Photo

China has since then promoted car reforms at central and local governmental levels, as well as public institutions and state-owned enterprises. According to the reform guidelines, government vehicles may only be used for special services, such as intelligence communication and emergencies, and not for regular government affairs. Heads of state-owned enterprises can choose to use government cars or receive transportation subsidies instead. 

All impounded cars, after their legal documents are verified, are either auctioned or dismantled depending on their condition and the money raised by the auctions will go to the central treasury.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced in March last year that car reform for central government has been fully accomplished – a total of 3,868 official cars across 140 central government departments were taken out of service by the end of 2015, accounting for 62 percent of all government vehicles.

VCG Photo

According to the Beijing News, 29 administrations at provincial level had completed vehicle reforms by the end of 2016.  

Labeling cars is seen as a mandatory step towards having further control on the use of public sector vehicles.

Wang Jingbo, dean of the School of Law-based Government in China University of Political Science and Law said labeling public sector vehicles works as the fundamental part for car reforms, which makes the public supervision on the use of public sector vehicles feasible. It used to be difficult for the public to tell which vehicles were public sector vehicles.  

In addition, the Beijing News also said local governments are taking measures to better manage public sector vehicles, for example, by installing GPS and establishing management service platforms to tighten regulations on the use of government cars.