A popular tourist destination in Chongqing, a fast-growing city in southwest China, has allocated a portion of its pavement for mobile phone users too engrossed in their screens to avoid other pedestrians.

In this Chinese city, phone addicts get their own sidewalk lane http://t.co/kpLf0ZTKLZ pic.twitter.com/d622PMSLgK

— Steven Millward (@SirSteven) September 15, 2014

Another section of the pavement bans phone users.

In July, National Geographic commissioned a similar stretch of pavement in Washington DC, in a brief experiment testing human behaviour.

Chongqing's new sidewalk has been criticised on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

"Am I supposed to jump to the other side of the path when I get an incoming phone call?" quipped one user.