That leaves plenty of headroom for expansion as Beijing promotes road projects and other infrastructure spending to bolster economic growth.
In addition to imposing huge fines, technocrats have been resorting to unusual tactics, such as buying vegetable stands in Beijing, eliminating road tolls for trucks carrying farm produce, and flooding markets with strawberries discharged from state reserves.
Even so, they face a three-year wait for a place in the Jingyuan Road housing project in Beijing's outer Shijingshan district, far away from any public transportation.
And if the 2006 World Cup does not live up to expectations, a bigger commercial prize lies only two years down the road, at the Olympic Games in Beijing .
In return, Beijing is getting engineering contracts to build port and road infrastructure, winning business for Chinese state-owned enterprises, and showing off what China is good at: building major infrastructure projects in record time.
Cars registered outside of Beijing are now banned from being driven inside the Fifth Ring Road on work days during the rush hours of 7 to 9 a.m. and 5 to 8 p.m.
Pushing through Beijing traffic, taxi driver Ma Junjing has one eye on the road ahead and the other on a laminated card twirling from his rearview mirror.
Today this statuesque Jamaican is a seasoned cyclist who races for a professional U.S. road cycling team and is busy preparing for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
In the case of Beijing, residential real estate (disclosure: I have property inside the Third Ring Road) may be getting ahead of itself but not yet be a bubble.
FORBES: Is Jim Chanos Right About A China Real Estate Bubble?
The trip from Beijing to Shanghai, a distance of about 1, 120km, costs far more by road than it does to fly.
The road to Bowen School cuts across dusty fields and through grim industrial zones in southeast Beijing.
The growth of road freight and the more widespread use of private vehicles have made transportation the second area of priority for Beijing's energy conservationists.
Chinese officials last month implemented a drastic plan to combat Beijing's persistent pollution problems, taking half of the city's more than 3 million vehicles off the road, temporarily closing factories and chemical plants, and suspending all construction work.
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