Government vehicles must carry visible logos

Official vehicles in China must now carry visible logos or insignia to indicate which organization they belong to, amid an ongoing nationwide crackdown on private use of official vehicles.

These new rules could help stamp out misuse of vehicles at local levels, experts said.

At least 17 provinces in China have ordered that logos must be spray-painted on government administrative vehicles.

This would indicate that the vehicles are for government use, for example, gongwu, or public affairs. Some areas are also installing GPS in official cars as well as provincial platforms to better manage vehicle use, the Beijing News reported on Sunday.

In East China's Zhejiang Province, both sides of official cars must carry an official logo, and a hot line for public reports and supervision is open to the public to report on misuse of vehicles, the Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday. East China's Shandong Province has also ordered all official vehicles to be spray-painted with the name or logo of the organization by the end of June.

"The move is one further step to crack down on inappropriate use of government vehicles and the resulting waste of public funds," Zhang Guohua, a senior transport researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission, told the Global Times.

By the end of 2015, official vehicle reform in central government departments and national institutions had been completed and had since entered into the supervision stage, the Beijing News reported.

"It will be easier for the public to supervise civil servants' private use of government vehicles if they have visible logos and marks," Zhang said, adding that GPS will provide strong evidence if there is suspected misuse of official cars.

Early in 2004, a county in Zhejiang first experimented with putting official insignia on cars, and this achieved quite good results and largely decreased misuses of government cars in the area, the Beijing News reported.