Over eight ships from the Guangdong Maritime Search and Rescue Center and other government agencies responded to the 5am distress call.

Ten foreigners were rescued from an unnamed vessel that had capsized near Nei Lingding Island.

In February of last year, 15 people went missing when an attempt to illegally ferry mainland migrants to Macau ended tragically when the ship carrying them capsized. A similar story from September 2014 resulted in the disappearance of some nine people.

The post Human Smuggling Ship Sinks Near Guangdong appeared first on The Nanfang.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport announced plans to restrict the total number of vehicles in the city to under 6 million by the end of 2017, and to only 6.3 million by the end of 2020.

Until now, Beijing has accepted 150,000 new annual vehicle applications, with 60,000 applications reserved for electric cars. The city plans to increase the number of new vehicle applications reserved for electric cars from 35 percent of total annual applications to 65 percent by 2020.

Beijing car owners face some of the tightest restrictions in China. Beijing drivers must pay high prices for parking spaces that need to be purchased before buying a car, high prices for license plates, and driving restrictions that keep them off the road during red alerts for air pollution or in preparation for military parades.

Despite the restrictions, there are already too many drivers on Beijing’s heavily congested roads, which are among the worst in China.

Beijing currently has 4.3 million registered car users.

The post Beijing To Limit New Cars To Just 100,000 A Year appeared first on The Nanfang.

Expected to be completed in late 2017, the 55 kilometer bridge will be the longest cross-sea bridge in the world. Costing 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), the traffic link between Lantau Island in Hong Kong and the mainland includes a seven kilometer underwater tunnel and a bridge section 30 kilometers long.

The bridge will reduce driving times between Hong Kong and Zhuhai from four hours to just over 30 minutes.

China has some of the longest cross-sea bridges in the world, including the Donghai Bridge in Shanghai, and the Hangzhou Bay Bridge.

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Sinkholes have again appeared in a southern Chinese city, this time on a Guangzhou street when a passing cement truck suddenly collapsed into a hole directly beneath it, throwing local traffic into chaos.

The ten square meter-wide sinkhole appeared on Saturday night in the Huadu District of Guangzhou. The massive hole had a diameter of ten meters and was 1.5 meters deep, occupying three lanes of traffic.

The hole neatly accommodated the cement truck, tipping it onto its right side.

There were no injuries reported.

A day afterwards, the truck had been removed and the sinkhole filled in with concrete (shown below). With the area still cordoned off, only one lane of the road was open to traffic.

No official reason has been given for the road collapse, although local residents suspect it may be related to construction of the city’s subway tunnels.

Sinkholes have been opening up in Guangzhou at an alarmingly common rate.

On June 14th, a sinkhole appeared in Huangpu District. Although the reason for the sinkhole hasn’t been made clear, the hole appeared directly underneath a car (seen above), similar to how the street collapsed underneath the cement truck in the most recent case. A similar case also occurred in June of last year when a Guangzhou road broke underneath the weight of a passing public bus.

Sinkholes also appeared in Guangzhou last year in the city’s Baiyun and Liwan districts. Huadu had previously experienced a sinkhole in 2014.

The post Sinkhole Opens Up in Guangzhou Underneath Passing Cement Truck appeared first on The Nanfang.

Measuring about 5 meters (16 feet) long, 3 meters (10 feet) wide, and 3 meters deep, the sinkhole miraculously did not cause any injuries.

Emergency crews removed the cars in an hour-long retrieval operation. An investigation into the cause of the sinkhole is pending.

Sinkholes are nothing new in China, particularly as cities continue to construct tunnels for urban subway systems. Last November, Nanjing saw five sinkholes appear in a single month. In August 2015, Dongguan saw a massive sinkhole that killed a construction worker. Shenzhen had a sinkhole in May 2015 and August 2013, while Fujian had one in December 2014 .

The post Hungry Sinkhole Swallows Four Cars And A Tree appeared first on The Nanfang.

According to the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, dash cam footage will finally be accepted as evidence in traffic violations. Until recently, only footage from surveillance cameras and police dash cams was accepted.

Dash cams installed on public buses and ambulances will also be considered as evidence by traffic police.  In the future, the Public Security Bureau plans to fit other state-owned vehicles with dash cams.

Other jurisdictions in China have already taken to dash cams to collect evidence. In May 2014, Shenzhen authorized the use of dash cams in its ambulances to help prosecute drivers who ignore the priority right-of-way of ambulances. Refusing to give way to an ambulance in Shenzhen constitutes a RMB 300 fine and three points deducted from a driver’s license.

The post Shanghai Police To Accept Dash Cam Evidence appeared first on The Nanfang.

The Ministry said that the most common acts of road rage include cutting off other drivers, tailgating, and sudden accelerating and braking. The culprits are also overwhelmingly male. According to the Ministry, 97 percent of all acts of road rage involve men.

One prominent example went viral this past May when a dash-mounted video camera recorded a vicious road rage incident in Chengdu. After a female driver named Hu changed lanes suddenly, a male driver named Zhang decided to retaliate. Zhang chased Hu until he was able to stop her underneath an overpass, where he assaulted her, leaving her with a concussion and broken bones.

While some netizens were quick to denounce Zhang for his cruelty, others cheered him on, arguing that Hu’s careless driving justified the physical retaliation.

The World Health Organization estimated 261,000 people died on China’s roads in 2013, while the Chinese government said 1,895 pedestrians died in traffic collisions when crossing roads last year.

The post Along With Car Ownership, Severe Road Rage Takes Root in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

A recent listing for a parking spot in Beijing’s northeastern Haidian District was priced at an insane RMB 800,000. At that price, you could elect instead to have unpaid parking tickets everyday for 40 years.

Starting in 2010, the average price for an underground parking spot in Beijing cost approximately RMB 150,000. By 2013, the average price jumped to RMB 200,000. Prices were even higher in the city’s central urban areas. The average cost of a parking spot within fourth ring was RMB 500,000, approximately the same price as a new BMW 5 Series.

Today, higher-end properties in the city center now list parking spots at RMB 400,000 to 600,000, while underground parking for certain luxury properties can fetch as much as a million.

However according to Guo Jifu, director of the Beijing Traffic Development Research Center, the situation in Beijing is perfectly normal. Guo claims that when compared with prices in major cities outside China, parking spaces are actually not that not expensive. For example, Guo cites Hong Kong, where a parking spot recently sold for 12.88 million HKD. Guo said:

It’s this same way in Manhattan, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. In these high density areas where every inch is worth gold, if a person can’t afford to live there, how can a car?

While Guo has a point, Beijing does not have a population density anywhere close to that of Manhattan, Tokyo or Hong Kong. Hong Kong and Tokyo have a population density of over 6,000 people per square kilometer, while the urban sprawl of Beijing is approximately 1,300 residents per square kilometer.

Short of new campaigns to increase bicycle use and discourage driving, there appears to be little relief for Beijing drivers looking to park their cars.

The post Parking Spaces in Beijing Now More Expensive Than Some Apartments appeared first on The Nanfang.

Beijing has long been known as the city of bicycles, but with China’s economic boom and desire for car ownership, there has been a steady decline in bicycle use over the past 15 years. To reverse the trend, the Beijing Commission of Transportation said the nation’s capital has cancelled roadside parking on all auxiliary roads less than nine meters wide, which will be replaced by dedicated bicycle lanes that will be both painted and fenced-off.

Nearly 250 kilometers of bicycle lanes in nine locations will be upgraded, including those on or near the Second Ring Road, Nanluoguxiang and Shichahai area, the Olympic Center, and the Zhongguancun West area.

To ensure the exclusivity of bicycle lanes, law enforcement will be increased against parking in bike lanes and more video cameras will be installed to “enhance supervision”.

Another 50,000 bicycles will also be available for rent by the end of the year with the goal that 18 percent of Beijingers commute to work by bicycle by 2020.  Currently, only 12 percent of Beijing residents bike to work, down from 38 percent in 2000.

“In recent years, the quickly increasing number of vehicles in the city have severely reduced the space for bicycles on the road and threaten the safety of cyclists,” said Zhou Zhengyu, chief of the transportation commission. “If we can ensure those car owners switch to bicycling, then we can significantly reduce road gridlock.”

In addition to these new bicycle policies, Beijing drivers face numerous obstacles.

Besides being the most congested city with the worst traffic in China, Beijing drivers are faced with purchasing their car licenses through a lottery system with skyrocketing prices, forced to buy a parking spot before they are allowed to buy a car, and are prone to car restrictions for important international events that limit car use by almost half.

The post Beijing to Return to its Roots and Promote Commuting by Bicycle appeared first on The Nanfang.

The yellow storm warning that was issued by the Beijing Meteorological Office was raised to orange shortly after heavy rains began to fall at 8:17pm, and was even momentarily raised to a red alert for Fengtai and Fangshan Districts in the west end.

For three hours, an average of 30 millimeters of precipitation fell on Beijing with one area recording a rainfall of 125 millimeters. Roads around the city were reported to be flooded including the upscale commercial area of Dongzhimen.

But it’s not over yet. Rain and lightning storms are forecast every day for the rest of this week, with temperatures dropping to 28 degrees Celsius on Saturday.

It’s been a very wet year so far in Beijing. Three-quarters of the city’s precipitation usually falls between June and August, but this rainy season has been especially busy. Up to now, Beijing has had 31 days of rain, 20 percent more than last year.

Back in 2012, heavy rains described as the “worst in 60 years” were blamed for causing the deaths of 37 Beijingers.

The post Look: Rainstorms Continue to Pummel Beijing with More on the Way appeared first on The Nanfang.