BEIJING / Chengdu - A system of acquiring railway tickets against proof of one's identity will come into effect nationwide, beginning Jan 1. But it might not guarantee a ticket for everybody who wants to head back home during the coming Lunar New Year rush, according to experts' opinion.

China railway authorities said passengers wishing to buy tickets for journeys on Jan 1 and afterwards would have to produce their identity cards across the country.

The real-name ticketing system allows every purchaser to buy five tickets at most through ticket agencies or at rail stations.

During the Spring Festival break, passengers in more than 50 railway stations in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where selling of tickets against proof of identity is already in use, must show both their IDs and tickets to be allowed into the waiting halls before boarding, according to the Ministry of Railways.

"To some extent, real-name ticketing will prevent scalpers from buying up and reselling tickets, but the only solution (to ensure a ticket for everybody who wants to travel) is to increase the rail capacity," Yang Hao, who has been working at Beijing Jiaotong University, teaching and researching railway operations since the 1970s, told China Daily on Wednesday.

China's railways are expected to carry 235 million passengers during the 2012 Spring Festival travel season, with an year-on-year increase of 6 percent, which means nearly 5.9 million people will travel by rail every day on average, according to the Ministry of Railways.

However, the average daily capacity of the country's railway system is about 3.8 million.

"It is the 2-million ticket gap every day during the coming Spring Festival break that's boosting the scalpers' business," Yang said.

As increasing railway capacity was long-term work, providing a fair ticket-purchasing environment by launching real-name ticketing system and a crackdown on scalpers was necessary, he added.

Yan Weipeng, director of the public security office in the Chengdu railway station, one of the first stations where real-name ticket buying and checking was introduced two years ago, said the number of scalpers decreased after starting the real-name policy.

A ticket scalper surnamed Liang in Chengdu is worried about losing business.

With the introduction of real-name ticketing policy, scalpers could no longer buy tickets in bulk. The only way they could now make money was by selling spaces in the queue at the ticket counter, Liang said.

Only last year, Liang was making 200 yuan ($31) from each ticket sold during the Spring Festival rush.

This year some scalpers were planning to claim a bigger cut, now that procuring tickets had got more difficult.

According to a statement released by the Ministry of Railways on Wednesday, a two-month crackdown on scalpers since Dec 7 was launched across the country, with 828 scalpers arrested and 5,194 tickets confiscated as of Tuesday.

Besides buying tickets through ticketing agencies and at railway stations, passengers can turn to the online ticket-booking website (www.12306.cn) and a hotline (95105105) to buy train tickets to be used during the coming Spring Festival.

Spring Festival, or the Lunar New Year, is the country's biggest annual holiday and an occasion for most Chinese to reunite with their families. The 40-day Spring Festival travel season in 2012 lasts from Jan 8 to Feb 16.

Xing Yu in Beijing contributed to this story.