Beijing's acting mayor Wang Anshun was elected as mayor of the Chinese capital at a session of the municipal legislature on Monday.

Wang's election was announced at the close of the first session of the 14th Beijing Municipal People's Congress Monday morning.

The session also saw the election of nine vice mayors for Beijing, including two new faces who were previously Communist Party of China (CPC) chiefs of Beijing's Daxing and Shunyi districts, respectively.

In a brief speech given to reporters, Wang said the municipal government must promote the CPC's best traditions and stand with the people in order to jointly overcome difficulties.

Wang is also deputy secretary of the CPC Beijing municipal commitee. He is also one of 205 members of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC who were elected at the ruling party's national congress held in November.

In a discussion held with lawmakers on Sunday, Wang said the municipal government should exert more efforts to handle air pollution, adding that concrete measures to fight smog will be studied.

"The current environmental problems are worrisome," Wang said.

Dense smog has shrouded Beijing since the annual session of the city's legislature began on January 22.

"The total number of vehicles should increase slowly," said Wang. "We will unswerwingly implement the quota policy."

In 2011, the city began to adopt a license plate lottery system to curb the rapid growth of vehicles. The number of vehicles in Beijing has increased to 5.18 million currently from 3.13 million in early 2008.

Vehicle emissions are one of the greatest contributors to Beijing's air pollution problem.

At the opening of the session on January 22, Wang unveiled a number of measures to treat smog and slash the density of major air pollutants by 2 percent this year.

The steps will include the removal of 180,000 older vehicles from the city's roads, the promotion of clean energy usage for government vehicles, heating systems and coal-burning boilers and the afforestation of 66,000 hectares of land over the next five years.

Beijing's air pollution hit record levels this month, with readings for PM2.5, or airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, exceeding safe levels by a significant margin.

Wang, a native of Huixian county in central China's Henan province, was appointed acting mayor of Beijing in July 2012.

Born in December 1957, the mayor previously worked in the Ministry of Land and Resources, as well as took up a series of positions in northwest China's Gansu province and the cities of Shanghai and Beijing.

(Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2013)