Beijing residents can expect to receive a new passport within five working days of their applications, the city's exit and entry administration announced as the country's first passport law came into effect.

The law, effective from Jan. 1, replaced a two-decade-old regulation governing passport management, aims to standardize the application, issuance and management of passports.

Under the old law, passports could take up to 30 days to arrive.

The law divides the passports into the categories of regular, diplomatic, and service passports.

It stipulates that the processing of regular passports should take no longer than 15 days, except in remote regions where it could take up to one month.

"Our staff have been working on office efficiency all these years and Beijing is now China's fastest passport issuer," the Beijing News quoted Feng Chunling, deputy head of Beijing Exit and Entry Administration, as saying.

The administration handled 3,118 passport applications and other border-crossing documents on Thursday, the first workday after the law was enacted.

Last year, Beijing ranked fourth in China in terms of the number of border-crossing documents handled, behind Guangdong Province, Yunnan Province, and Shanghai.

At least 20 million mainland citizens hold passports, according to police statistics. The number of Chinese receiving passports shot up from an annual average of 100,000 in early 1980s to 3.92 million in 2006, police officials said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 5, 2007)