China takes further action on vehicle emissions

Chinese auto manufacturers will need to reduce their vehicles' emissions to meet the new emission standards in the country.

Last week, Guangdong province upgraded their emission standards for light vehicles to the National V, which requires sulfur content in fuel to be no more than 10 parts per million (ppm), one-fifth of the National IV's 50ppm.

The new standard is applied in the capital city Guangzhou and other eight cities in the province. It makes Guangdong the third place to apply the top emission standard in the country after Beijing and Shanghai.

In order to control pollution from car exhausts, the Chinese government is taking action to reduce auto-related emissions and plans to implement the National V standards in the whole country by Jan 1, 2018.

Several auto-related topics have been proposed in the annual session of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political advisory body, last week.

According to a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Feb 26, among 161 Chinese cities, 90.1 percent of them failed air quality testing in 2014.

On the other hand, China sold more than 23 million vehicles last year, the world leader by sales with the rising rate of 6.86 percent.