From Xinhua:

Foreign travelers in Beijing would receive a new joint arrival-departure card which is designed to help accelerate the process of entering and exiting the country.
 
According to news released by officials with the immigration border control, the new registration card integrating the previous arrival and departure cards would eliminate content like date of arrival, date of departure and address of accommodation to help simplify the registration.
 
Foreign visitors could complete their card ahead of time instead of being required to fill out the forms onsite.
 
Border guards will keep the entry card after travelers go through the arrival process and entrust travelers to keep the departure card until exiting the country.

Sounds to me like a Hong Kong style process, which would be an improvement. On the other hand, it's not like the paperwork here is that onerous. As is the case with just about every country's customs procedures, if they have a large number of officials doing passport control, things move quickly, but when you have one old dude responsible for processing 100 people, the lines tend to get long.