Guo Zhenfu, Deputy to the National People’s Congress, Vice President of Dongfeng Automobile Co., Ltd. and President of Zhengzhou Nissan Automobile Co., Ltd. made suggestions to the Government

On NPC & CPPCC of this year, Guo Zhenfu, Deputy to the National People’s Congresss, Vice President of Dongfeng Automobile Co., Ltd. and President of Zhengzhou Nissan Automobile Co., Ltd. put forward two proposals about Chinese self-independent brand innovation and public transportation service. In the one hand, Guo Zhenfu pointed out that “the fundamental basis for adjustment of economic structure and transformation of growth patterns lies in self-independent innovation”. He also proposed to “establish a long-term mechanisms to support the innovation of self-independent brand” as for the issue of Chinese self-independent brand innovation. On the other hand, he deepened his suggestion of “developing civic vehicles” proposed on last year’s NPC & CPPCC and came up with the proposal of “adding accessible taxi and providing differentiated public transportation service products.”

Compared with mature product introduction, reproducible technical standards and management process of joint ventures, self-independent brands are confronted with a number of problems, such as long duration, huge input, weak foundation, high risk etc. all of which are realistic factors that restrict the development of self-independent brands. Guo Zhenfu pointed out that the government has unveiled many supportive policies to promote self-independent brand innovation. However, most of them are limited to the single link of innovation and inclines more to preferential policies for new products in production and profit stages, providing less support in aspects such as preliminary development, establishment of standards and technical personnel etc.

In order to make self-independent brand innovation play the leading role effectively in promoting economic structure adjustment and industrial optimization and upgrading, Guo Zhenfu suggested that firstly the formation of long-term innovation mechanisms should be supported based on tax structure design in order to promote various resource configurations to gather towards the real economy. Secondly, consistent support should be given to innovation and the protection of self-independent intellectual properties. Thirdly, the platform and mechanism of “cooperation among government, industry and institutes”. Lastly, efforts should be made to build up a good innovation atmosphere and social environment.  

As for the problem of public transportation, Guo Zhenfu proposed bluntly that traveling of senior citizens and other people who have difficulties in travelling should be included into the scope of development of people’s livelihood by the government. To bring out the accessible taxi to satisfy the traveling demands of special populations is a problem that should be given top priority in the current public transportation field.        

According to Guo Zhenfu, the accessible taxi refers to convenient, comfortable and safe taxies whose interior space are specially designed with humanized facilities such as electric getting-on pedal, sliding door and folded rear-door slope, through which special care could be given to people who may have difficulties in traveling including the old, the people carrying babies or heavy luggage etc. In the developed countries, it has become a new tendency advocated for urban traveling. “Taking the multifunctional taxi with humanized space, high security, high efficiency, low cost and large capacity as vehicle for public transportation is an effective supplement for existing taxies that are uniformly cars.” Guo Zhenfu commented that “Take Europe and America as examples, their market survey shows that the multi-functional taxies can carry more passengers than common taxies, which could help reduce the number of taxies on the road, the traveling cost of urban citizens, the space cost of parking lot while easing the problem of traffic jam. Besides, wide vision and side-sliding door provided by vehicle of this kind could also help reduce effectively the occurrence of traffic accidents.”     

However, Guo Zhenfu also pointed out that there are still a number of cognitive and practical problems to be solved in popularizing the accessible taxi in China. The most prominent problem is that the government fails to keep up with the demand of social development in the aspect of public transportation resource configuration and lacks planning for traveling of the senior citizens and other people who have difficulties in travelling, which are inconsistent with the current economic and social development. What’s more, Guo Zhenfu also noticed that the current management system of taxies has already become a great barrier that restricts the normal performance of taxies in terms of public transportation function. The phenomenon of refusing to take passengers which occurs frequently is related with the taxi operator’s heavy burden of having to seek maximum profit. In addition, Mr. Guo stated that there are few multi-functional vehicle types in the current domestic automobile market, including the accessible taxis that satisfy the traveling demand of special groups. What’s more, auto manufacturers at home rarely have arrangement for products of this kind. That is to say, the domestic market is not yet prepared for developing the accessible taxi.