North China province to ditch dirty vehicles

North China's Hebei province, home to seven of China's top 10 worst-polluted cities, is expected to eliminate 1.03 million high-emission vehicles within three years to reduce pollution.

"Huangbiaoche," or "yellow-label cars," are vehicles that fail to meet national emission standards. They currently account for 6.5 percent of the 15.68 million vehicles in the province, according to data presented at a conference on the elimination of yellow-label cars organized by the provincial government on Thursday.

Pollutants discharged by yellow-label cars, which include government service cars, buses and commercial vehicles, account for about 70 percent of the total pollutants discharged by vehicles in the province, according to official data.

Some 578,000 such vehicles are expected to be removed from the road by the end of this year, with another 267,000 expected to be eliminated for 2014 and 181,000 in the year 2015, according to the government's plan.

Hebei's provincial capital city of Shijiazhuang, together with the cities of Xingtai, Tangshan, Handan, Hengshui, Baoding and Langfang, were among the top 10 most-polluted cities in September, according to a report issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP).

Beijing and its neighbors Tianjin and Hebei saw lingering smog over the past two months, although the coal-consuming winter season has not yet started.

On Sept. 18, the MEP and the governments of six provincial-level regions, including Beijing, Tianjin, the provinces of Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, signed an agreement on the prevention and control of air pollution in Beijing and its surrounding areas.

The Ministry of Finance announced earlier that the central government has budgeted 5 billion yuan (814 million U.S. dollars) for rewarding air pollution treatment efforts in such regions.