Beijing will continue to increase the supply of rental housing in the next five years, during which 1,300 hectares of land will be supplied for 500,000 sets of rental housing.

The rental houses, which will be mostly built on collectively-owned land, will be rented in bulk at market price by the municipal government and then offered to low-income families at affordable housing prices with a term of ten years. The government will fill the gap in price.

On May 24, a total of 927 sets of rental housing in Tangjialing of Haidian District, which are of the first batch of pilot projects, was officially opened to low-income families in the district for on-site house selection and contract signing.

Since 2011, Beijing has rolled out pilot project of rental housing on five collectively-owned areas, providing 12,800 rental houses to staff working at nearby industrial parks, migrant workers and urban low-income families.

The tax reductions of Beijing reached 29.7 billion yuan (US$4.33 billion) by replacing business tax with value-added tax (VAT) until January.

Since Beijing put on trial the policy of replacing business tax with VAT in May last year, the State Administration of Taxation of Beijing Municipal Office has completed the practice among 238,000 taxpayers in four major industries, with a reduction of 29.7 billion yuan by January this year.

The taxation bureau has also integrated tax services through platforms including the internet, mobile phone and self-service machines. It has also set up a 24-hour tax self-service center, which offers a “green passage” for tax services online and offline.

The tramways of China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region unveiled a new logo and visual identity on Friday for its century-old tramcars, also known as Ding Ding car.

The background color of the new visual identity of tramcar is green, representing the tramcars are environmental and safe.

The new slogan, “catch a ride, catch a smile” is printed on the front of the tramcar. On the bottom of the vehicle, there is a smile expression, meaning tramcars’ friendly personality and faithful service.

For the coming months, tramways is also going to make its 160 tramcars smile with an additional sticker on the bumper.

Besides this new graphic system, Hong Kong tramways also pledged to make its passenger information on stops and website more friendly.

As all tramcars are designed and built at tramways’ depot by skillful and experienced craftsman in Hong Kong, to commend the hard work of them, tramways will install a bronze plate on board of each tramcar to remind the public of the unknown heroes.

Hong Kong tramways has been in service since 1904 and operates nowadays a fleet of 164 tramcars. It is the world’s largest fleet of double-deck tramcars in operation, carrying about 200,000 passengers every day.