Central Propaganda Department: With regards to analysis and discussion of the new price fixing mechanism for gasoline, the media must not use material from independent investigations, including images. Only use Xinhua wire copy. (March 26, 2013)

中宣部：关于成品油定价新机制的分析、评论，各地媒体不要使用自行采访的稿件，包括图片在内，全部使用新华社通稿。

Caijing reports that the retail price of gasoline and diesel have been reduced.

Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to these instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, gas prices, Ministry of Truth, propaganda
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Beijing’s base fare of 10 yuan ($1.60) has not changed in a decade. Charges for travelling farther than the minimum fare were adjusted in 2006, from 1.6 to 2 yuan per kilometre. Since 2009 drivers have added a small fuel surcharge for longer rides. But whereas cabbies’ revenues have barely changed, average wages in the city have risen sharply, making the Beijing taxi a rare bargain. An analysis by Macquarie, an investment bank, found that a typical passenger has seen taxi costs fall by half since 2003, relative to average incomes.

[...]Petrol prices are set by the government and have risen twice since early February, most recently by 6% on March 20th, to 8.3 yuan per litre ($5 per gallon). The government has accepted that some fare adjustments may be needed but has given no timetable. For the moment, it is offering to give drivers a monthly subsidy of 300 yuan. Mr Zhang says he will gladly take it, but he calculates that petrol increases will cost him three times that amount. Macquarie calculates that it will take a fare increase of 20-30% to sort things out.

The sooner the better. In February disgruntled drivers were mumbling about a possible strike. Cabbies have gone on strike in other Chinese cities and indeed, in 2008, early in his tenure as party chief of Chongqing, Bo Xilai (recently sacked from that post) burnished his populist-socialist credentials by mediating with striking cabbies on live television.

The increasing affordability of taxis encourages Beijing residents to opt out of crowded public transportation, contributing to an overall shortage of cabs during rush hour and bad weather. While potential patrons are annoyed with a lack of vacancy, taxi drivers frustrated by low fares may maximize their profits by loading up with separate parties heading in the same direction, charging each the metered fare. Traffic authorities in the capital are suggesting that sharing rides could be a solution for a shortage of cabs, but the share should be negotiated by the customers, not the driver. From China Daily:

Beijing traffic authorities are encouraging residents to share taxis to overcome the shortage of cabs during rush hours.

“Regulations permit co-hiring a taxi when all passengers get in the car at the same place and head in the same direction,” Yao Kuo, director of the Beijing transportation law enforcement team, said.

“We hope taxi enterprises will try to offer such a service,” he said.

Yao warned that taxi drivers who refused to accept shared hiring would be penalized.

Zhang Changqing, a traffic law professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, welcomed taxi sharing as it would not only help relieve the city’s traffic congestion but also reduce exhaust emissions.

But he said authorities should regulate to differentiate between multiple hire arranged by the passengers and that arranged by taxi drivers intent on making a profit.

“Co-hiring a taxi should be encouraged with the passengers’ full willingness and knowledge of an arrangement. But some drivers randomly pick up passengers when there are already customers in the taxi and they finally charge all passengers the same fare in order to make more money, which is not legally permitted,” he said.

But residents and taxi drivers do not seem to share enthusiasm for co-hiring.[...]

Another recent China Daily article mentions a nationwide government subsidy intended to insulate taxi drivers from fuel price increases, and the response of drivers to the allowance:

Taxi drivers nationwide will receive a subsidy of around 300 yuan ($47.50) a month to offset the second hike in fuel prices this year, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

The government on Tuesday raised gasoline and diesel prices by 600 yuan a ton. As a result, the retail price of mid-grade gasoline will increase by 6 percent and benchmark diesel by 7 percent.

On Feb 8, the NDRC increased gasoline and diesel prices by 300 yuan a ton.

[...]But many taxi drivers in the capital have called for an urgent adjustment to fares, saying the subsidy hardly makes up for the increased costs they will incur.

Jiang Mingsheng, a Beijing taxi driver, said the increase would cost him an extra 1,000 yuan a month.

“Although there would be a 300-yuan subsidy, it means that I would earn 700 yuan less than before,” he said. “If I want to make up that loss, I have to work more hours.”

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gas prices, taxi drivers, taxis
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

But one thing that cabs have going in their favor is price. The flag fall is usually 10 rmb, 11 rmb at night ($1.55/$1.75) for the first 3 km, and then 2 rmb (30 cents) per subsequent kilometer, up to 15 km, at which point the price rises to 3 rmb (45 cents). By way of comparison, a 5-mile trip in Beijing would cost about $3.50. In Chicago it would cost you more like $10 before tip. Beijing’s rates have been in place since 2006 (story in Chinese) and the only increase has been a 2 rmb fuel charge added this spring for trips over 3 km. That makes cabs a rare bastion of price stability in a place where most everything else—food, fuel, housing, wages—is going up. A 5 gallon jug of water that cost 11 rmb in 2007 now runs 19 rmb.

…

In other cities in China, the cab market is handled differently. In Shenzhen and Shanghai, the cabs are just more expensive. In other cities, like the southeastern factory town of Wenzhou, where I traveled last week, the cabs are effectively more expensive, because none of the drivers agree to go by metered rates. Instead every trip is a negotiation between passenger and driver, and the trip price starts at around 100 rmb. Beijing cab drivers have less leeway. Enforcement is more strict in the capital, making it hard for drivers to ignore metered rates. And a strike, which drivers in several Chinese cities resorted to in 2008, would not be tolerated here, Beijing cabbies say.

This summer, taxi drivers in Hangzhou and Shanghai went on strike against rising fuel costs, a lack of benefits and the high accommodation charges that Ramzy notes in his piece.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, black taxis, gas prices, inflation, taxis
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A strike by lorry drivers at Shanghai’s port led to pitched battles with security forces last week, illustrating just how volatile the politics of high fuel prices can be in China.

Operations at what is, by some measures, the world’s largest port appeared to be returning to normal on Sunday evening after the Shanghai city government ordered authorities to cut fees and reduce road tolls in an attempt to get drivers back to work.

But the complaints of Shanghai’s lorry drivers as they slowly return to work are being echoed across the country as high fuel prices cut into profit margins for China’s independent truckers.

China’s transportation sector is struggling to cope after the government raised fuel prices twice this year in response to increasing global oil prices.

Trucking is big business in China, with road freight revenues amounting to $129.7bn last year, according to research from Datamonitor. And for young men from the countryside, buying a truck to tap into that sector is a big step up the economic ladder.

Reuters has more on the strike:

The drivers’ strike disrupted shipments at China’s busiest port and brought shivers of unrest about rising costs and fees to Shanghai, which has sought to remake itself as a symbol of outward-looking prosperity.

Over the weekend, the Shanghai government cut fees in a bid to defuse anger over high fuel prices among the independent contractors who haul goods to and from the city’s string of ports. Many drivers working as company employees on fixed wages did not join the protest.

The strike, which began on Wednesday, was a brief but telling symptom of the pressures facing the Chinese government over inflation, which in March hit 5.4 percent from a year earlier, magnifying the ruling Communist Party’s jitters about protests erupting over prices, taxes and fees.

By Monday morning, it appeared that the Shanghai government’s push to douse the discontent was working. Roads leading to the city’s docks were busy with traffic.

Yet the New York Times reports that the striking truck drivers planned to resume protests later this week:

A group of truck drivers who helped stage a three-day strike here last week over rising oil prices and high government fees said Sunday that they planned to resume their demonstrations this week, despite this city’s promise to eliminate some freight transportation fees and reduce others.

Policemen arrested a man on Friday after he threw rocks at a truck during protests over city government policies.

“This is really small money,” one truck owner said of the city’s concessions in an interview Sunday. He asked not to be named because he feared the government would punish him.

“The real problem is high oil prices and the way the government has cheated us with fines and extra fees,” he said. “The whole system stinks.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gas prices, strikes, trucks
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

About 40 trucks gathered Thursday at a cargo-handling center in Baoshan district in the city’s northeastern outskirts, but there was no repeat of Wednesday’s violence, when a trucking company owner said eight or nine truckers were arrested when they tried to overturn a traffic patrol car.

The protest comes as China’s communist leaders try to defuse mounting public frustration over inflation that spiked to a 32-month high of 5.4 percent in March, driven by an 11.7 percent jump in food costs. Inflation is politically dangerous for the ruling party because it erodes economic gains that help to support the communists’ claim to power.

Chinese leaders have declared taming prices their priority this year. Cities have raised minimum wages by 10 to 20 percent, but that has failed to keep pace with climbing living costs in many areas.

Authorities reacted quickly to the Shanghai truckers’ protest, deploying police and removing accounts of the unrest from Chinese websites.

See also reports from Al Jazeera and Shanghaiist.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gas prices, inflation, protests, Shanghai
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gas prices, NDRC, satire
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China has long provided fuel subsidies, which have been blamed for encouraging wasteful consumption, propping up inefficient industries, degrading the environment, and forcing energy consumers in other countries to pay higher prices. But record oil and coal prices, driven in no small part by economic growth in China, have made it that much more expensive to subsidize gasoline, diesel, and electricity consumption.

Add to that the growing acceptance around the world that taxing carbon emissions is the proper response to inefficient production processes and suddenly the cost of those Chinese subsidies, in direct financial terms, could double. It would seem that now is the perfect time for the government to announce the cessation of subsidies, price caps, and other interventions in energy markets, altogether.

Previously in CDT: China Sharply Hikes Energy Prices

© Claire Kells for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: energy, fuel subsidies, gas prices
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

On May 23, gas attendant Xiao Yang was amazed by the scene he had not seen in the more than two years he has worked at a gas station in Beijing’s Chaoyang District. At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, hundreds of vehicles lined up to top up their petrol tanks. He was unaware then, but the same thing was taking place in all gas stations throughout Beijing. The immediate trigger for this frenzied buying was a news broadcast that gasoline prices were due to rise the next day.

“The high oil price in the international market is the major reason for the increase in domestic oil prices. China’s oil price should not remain at a low level against the backdrop of high international oil prices. Maybe in the future, the price of oil products in China will rise again,” said Xia Yishan, Research Fellow with the China Institute of International Studies.

[Full Text]

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: energy, gas prices, oil
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Against the backdrop of falling international crude oil prices and the revaluation of the renminbi, the National Development and Reform Committee has once again enhanced the sales price of refined oil. Prices for #93 gasoline in greater Beijing are at an historical high. The explanation from the parties concerned is that the previous price hike had been set low, that our prices for refined oil were still lower than the international market price. From now on both the conditions of the international market and the price society is able to withstand will be considered in continuing price adjustments. The rumors have circling around, but from the start we’ve been able to counter each one. Clearly they are just brazen deceit.

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gas prices, oil, PetroChina, sinopec
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

As oil prices rise, carpooling is taking off in China’s biggest cities. But unlike in the West, authorities appear none too happy about it.

Web sites that serve as bulletin boards for those who want to carpool have popped up and are drawing huge amounts of interest…

As crude oil prices soar worldwide, authorities in many developed countries are encouraging gas-saving methods such as carpooling. But Chinese authorities may be ready to crack down on it, because they see the drivers as engaging in illicit commercial transactions and the taxi industry views carpooling as a front for outlaw cab services.

State-run news media have carried numerous declarations of officials saying carpooling is illegal if the driver receives payment.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: car pooling, gas prices, traffic
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

For the Beijing bureaucrats who control China’s petrol pump prices, the cloud cast by Hurricane Katrina over global oil markets is lined with silver.

At least for now, Katrina’s disruption of the US refineries – not China’s voracious demand – is copping the blame for the global oil supply squeeze that sent prices to record levels last week.

Katrina may even deliver a windfall to the Chinese economy that will offset the higher cost of energy.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gas prices, hurricane katrina, oil
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall