Earlier this year, Lawyer Li Zhiyong, a partner at Guangdong Zhiming Law Firm, was interviewed by media reporters when applying for government information disclosure on highway tolls. Recently, Xinhua News Agency again cited quotes from Lawyer Li Zhiyong's interview in the article "Where Did Over 400 Billion Yuan in Annual Highway Tolls Go? Is It Really Just for 'Debt Repayment'?"

In response, Lawyer Li Zhiyong stated: "What I said to reporters when applying for the disclosure of Guangdong highway toll information earlier this year was cited by a Xinhua News Agency report questioning highway tolls about ten months later. Although not verbatim, it conveyed the same meaning: limiting highways from becoming money-making machines. I also advocate for the gradual abolition of highway tolls."

　Original text: Excerpt from "Where Did Over 400 Billion Yuan in Annual Highway Tolls Go? Is It Really Just for 'Debt Repayment'?"

Xinhua Net Beijing November 30 (Xinhua Insight reporters Ye Qian, Wei Shengyao) Recently, Shandong transportation authorities announced that 15 expressway sections expiring at the end of 2014 would continue to charge tolls, citing repayment of bank loans as the main reason.

Shandong is not the first province to postpone toll deadlines. Previously, Xinjiang and other regions also extended tolls for expiring roads. It is reported that toll expressways, which emerged in the 1990s, are about to face a peak of toll expiration. Based on the mileage built in 2000, approximately 16,000 kilometers of expressways will see their toll periods expire within the next two years. Whether all these roads will continue to extend tolls has drawn widespread attention.

Currently, over 90% of the 100,000 kilometers of expressways nationwide charge tolls. Experts estimate that annual toll revenue from expressways across the country exceeds 400 billion yuan. For these so-called "money-printing machines," does the reason of "unpaid loans" for extending tolls hold water? And where does the collected money go?

Question: Is the collected money insufficient? Investigation: Companies rake in huge profits, turning low-profit public utilities into high-profit industries.

The Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway is hailed by the industry as a "typical sample of Chinese expressways." As a key transportation route connecting Guangzhou and Shenzhen, this operational road opened to traffic in 1997 and is jointly operated by a Hong Kong-funded enterprise and a subsidiary of Guangdong Provincial Transportation Group, a state-owned enterprise. The 122-kilometer one-way trip costs 70 yuan in tolls. According to the annual report of Hong Kong Hopewell Highway Infrastructure Ltd., a joint venture partner, toll revenue in 2013 reached 3.169 billion yuan, averaging 8.7 million yuan per day. In stark contrast to the high tolls, the expressway is widely criticized by drivers for its poor quality.

So, how much do toll expressways nationwide collect annually? In 2010, relevant authorities disclosed that national toll road revenue had reached 280 billion yuan. No further figures have been released since. However, data from the Ministry of Transport shows that during four holidays in 2012 (National Day) and 2013 (Spring Festival, Qingming Festival, and Labor Day), a total of 14.308 billion yuan in tolls was waived for small passenger cars. Based on this, experts estimate that annual expressway toll revenue nationwide now exceeds 400 billion yuan.

Data from Shandong's transportation department shows that in 2013, government-loan expressways collected 10.4 billion yuan in tolls, not including about 40% from commercial expressways. In western China, Guangxi's total toll revenue reached 8.48 billion yuan.

In Guangdong, where almost all expressways are commercial, several roads have massive toll figures. The 2014 first-half annual report of Guangdong Expressway Development Co., Ltd. shows that nine expressway sections, including Guangfo, Fokai, and Huiyan, generated about 2.6 billion yuan in toll revenue in the first half of the year.

Behind these huge toll revenues lie astonishing profits for operating companies. The annual report of Guangdong Expressway Development Co., Ltd., which mainly operates the Guangfo and Fokai expressways, shows a net profit margin of 26% in the first half of this year. Similarly, reports from Shenzhen Expressway, Shandong Expressway, and Chengdu-Chongqing Expressway show profit margins mostly above 30%, even surpassing industries like finance and real estate.

So why has the expressway, a public welfare project that should yield only modest profits, become a high-profit industry? A project manager from a Guangdong road and bridge company told reporters that, on one hand, China's expressway toll standards are generally high, with per-kilometer prices exceeding those in many developed countries. On the other hand, when the toll system was designed, such massive traffic volumes were not anticipated.

Currently, tolls for Class 1 vehicles (7 seats or fewer) range from 0.4 to 0.6 yuan per kilometer nationwide, while Class 2 to Class 5 vehicles pay between 1 and 2 yuan. In Guangdong, the rate for Class 1 vehicles is 0.6 yuan. When the Guangzhou-Shenzhen expressway first opened, traffic was light, but now daily traffic reaches 440,000 vehicles, generating high profits for the operating company.

Li Zhiyong, a lawyer at Guangdong Zhiming Law Firm, said that given current traffic volumes, local authorities should reassess toll standards to prevent expressways from becoming "money-making roads," and avoid the situation where "every turn of the wheel brings in a fortune."

Given that China's expressway network still has a long way to go, experts remind that standardizing toll collection should be done in advance. Wang Zechu, a counselor of the Guangdong Provincial Government, said that currently, local transportation departments and their subordinate enterprises hold a monopoly in expressway construction and management. Coupled with the contribution of road construction to GDP, local governments have an impulse to build roads, which also leads to poor efficiency of some roads. As a result, local governments have to "take advantage" of profitable roads, leading to various excuses for extending toll periods. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen scientific argumentation of government decisions to avoid falling into the vicious cycle of "borrowing money to build roads, repaying loans with tolls" due to excessive construction.

(Xinhua Net, November 30, 2014)