China is planning to curb new gasoline and diesel car projects and raise the threshold for electric car manufacturing, as the world's largest car market opens its door wider and wider to international players.
In a proposed guideline released last Wednesday, the National Development and Reform Commission said the move is designed to prevent low-end excessive production capacity and boost the growth of the budding new energy vehicle sector.
The guideline, which is now soliciting public opinions, came days after the commission's announcement that the 50:50 equity cap is to be removed for foreign electric carmakers from late July and for foreign passenger carmakers from 2022.
And should the automakers overcome all these hurdles, shareholders will be prohibited from selling their shares before the new plants reach their designed capacity, which should be no less than 100,000 passenger cars a year or no less than 5,000 commercial vehicles.
Before building a plant, the shareholders should have research and development facilities, obtain the intellectual property for the key components of the vehicles they would like to make, including control units, electric motors and batteries.
The combined expenditure on development in the past two years before filing an application to build a plant should be no less than 200 million yuan ($30.12 million).

　　Source: China daily