The Standard reports that Beijing is running out of space - for cars. Beijing has over 2 million cars and only 600,000 off-street parking spots. Worse still the number of cars is growing by 10% per year. The reason for this problem? When many of the housing developments were constructed, cars were a novelty and no one expected people would have them.

Beijing is now mulling (I love that word) a measure like Tokyo and Singapore: to buy a car, you need proof of off-street parking. My question is this: where are people putting these cars at the moment if there's such a crisis in space? I don't live in Beijing so I can't be sure, but I'm not aware of too many people being forced to leave their cars in the middle of the road for want a car space.

The solution is obvious: there's a nice big square in the middle of town that only gets used for a couple of parades and the odd massacre. At 10 yuan a car Tiananmen could finally become a money spinner.