bidding for license plates in China

5213 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by fightingtorque, May 11, 2006

hazik

Discussion Starter · May 2, 2006

I saw on the news that when a license plate with the number 8888 was sold in a bid for 200,000 yuan or about 25,000USD. another plate with numbers 168 was sold for nearly 150,000 yuan.

bidding for license plates cost alot more in Shanghai and beijing. How much does it cost to buy a license plate in a smaller city?

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Tiggo

· #2 · May 2, 2006

in smaller cities you bribe the policeman who is in charge of the plate distribution, or he is a friend of yours.....a lot envelop money business.

I don't think there's a lot plate bid in smaller cities anyway.

A shanghai normal auto license plate costs 20 times more expensive than a Parisian counterpart.

That little piece of metal plate costs more than 4,000 EUROS.

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hazik

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 2, 2006 (Edited)

Tiggo said:
in smaller cities you bribe the policeman who is in charge of the plate distribution, or he is a friend of yours.....a lot envelop money business.

I don't think there's a lot plate bid in smaller cities anyway.

A shanghai normal auto license plate costs 20 times more expensive than a Parisian counterpart.

That little piece of metal plate costs more than 4,000 EUROS.

Normal plates in Shanghai and beijing don't cost 200000 yuan, that's just for the one with the numbers 8888, I think you can get a regular plate for about 30000 yuan. But's it's less in smaller cities. why do you need give money to corrupt official in a small city when the price for a license plate is much less.

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firefox

· #4 · May 2, 2006 (Edited)

Tiggo said:
in smaller cities you bribe the policeman who is in charge of the plate distribution, or he is a friend of yours.....a lot envelop money business.

You think bribing a policeman is really that easy? If you just give money to the policeman in charge and he doesn't know you at all, I'm not sure he would accept your money. It's too dangerous for them to take bribes like this. A friend of mine from a Southeast asian country once told me a story of bribing the traffic police in a capital street and he added that it is actually quite common in his country. That surprised me a lot as I don't think that would happen in my city. It's not that they don't wanna take the money, but taking such little money at the price of getting themselves in the risk of being caught, it's really not a good deal.

The corruption in China is a huge problem, it's even true today as officials are taking bribes in a way more and more ''sophisticated'' and more and more ''invisible''. I would say the ''money envelop'' as a form of bribe is just a story of yesterday. today it's just ''太不专业了!

"

In my city, the plate number is obtained with a ''Lottery machine'', everyone is given 3 chances from which we choose a favorite number. Here the plates （鲁A）are not that expensive, maybe 400$ should do it.

btw，I remember fightingtorque, you have a 鲁B plate don't you?

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Tiggo

· #5 · May 2, 2006

hazik said:
Normal plates in Shanghai and beijing don't cost 200000 yuan, that's just for the one with the numbers 8888, I think you can get a regular plate for about 30000 yuan. But's it's less in smaller cities. why do you need give money to corrupt official in a small city when the price for a license plate is much less.

It's not as dumb as you guys might think.

Basically, the policeman in charge just hides away those plates which have nice number combination like 518, 666, 888 etc and he will give the priority of choosing the number to his friends who know the meaning of "gratitude"! The policemen are very well paid in China comparing to other wage receivers, a rookie police officer got around 100,000 RMB/Year (10,000 EURO) in Xiaoshan (Hangzhou), Zhejiang these days. They don't need a helluva cash, they just want their life to be more comfortable, distributiing favorable numbers to a certain group of people will certainly benefit their future career. That's all about it, no such dumb person would actually ask for money and risk their professional life.

You need around 40,000 RMB to buy a Shanghai plate, that's why quite a lot Shanghainese are regestrering their cars in other regions like Zhejiang and Jiangsu province where the expense is much less expensive, but with a provincial plate in Shanghai sometimes brings about a lot inconvenience. Don't know about the situation in Beijing tho.

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hazik

Discussion Starter · #6 · May 2, 2006

Tiggo said:
It's not as dumb as you guys might think.

Basically, the policeman in charge just hides away those plates which have nice number combination like 518, 666, 888 etc and he will give the priority of choosing the number to his friends who know the meaning of "gratitude"! The policemen are very well paid in China comparing to other wage receivers, a rookie police officer got around 100,000 RMB/Year (10,000 EURO) in Xiaoshan (Hangzhou), Zhejiang these days. They don't need a helluva cash, they just want their life to be more comfortable, distributiing favorable numbers to a certain group of people will certainly benefit their future career. That's all about it, no such dumb person would actually ask for money and risk their professional life.

You need around 40,000 RMB to buy a Shanghai plate, that's why quite a lot Shanghainese are regestrering their cars in other regions like Zhejiang and Jiangsu province where the expense is much less expensive, but with a provincial plate in Shanghai sometimes brings about a lot inconvenience. Don't know about the situation in Beijing tho.

I went to guangzhou with my brother, his car had shenzhen plates on it. And we get pulled over by the cops and had to pay a fine when we were going through a bridge, but the fine was only 70 yuan less than what we paid for lunch. But it would be an inconveince to drive in a city without the local plates all the time.

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Tiggo

· #7 · May 3, 2006

hazik said:
I went to guangzhou with my brother, his car had shenzhen plates on it. And we get pulled over by the cops and had to pay a fine when we were going through a bridge, but the fine was only 70 yuan less than what we paid for lunch. But it would be an inconveince to drive in a city without the local plates all the time.

What did you guys do wrong?

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hazik

Discussion Starter · #8 · May 3, 2006

Tiggo said:
What did you guys do wrong?

Nothing, we were driving in a Chery flagcloud, just didn't have the right license to cross the bridge. Just paid a 70 yuan fine, not that big a problem.

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fightingtorque

· #9 · May 11, 2006

Apart from Shanghai the plates are cheap, but as has been said, if you know the man, you can get better numbers. I once met some guys who were running 94518 and 94510 which in chinese sound a bit like 'only I want to get rich' and 'only I want to win'.

I run my qingdao registered car in Shanghai, been here nearly 2 years and never any problem. I always pay the 'out of town special shanghai road tax' which is about 160RMB per month and display it in the windscreen. I make a point of looking obviously foreign by having no tinting of the window glass and taking sunglasses off at policed intersections.

The car is very loud with the throttles open but not too loud running gently so I ease off when I see the police. And there are no stickers, spolers, wings or stuff on the outside so unless you can tell a Jetta 15 inch wheel from a Chery 14 inch wheel and unless you can tell a 40 mm lowered suspension from a car that might have half a ton of stuff in the trunk then it just looks like any ordinary chery. Always looks a bit tame at the race track though.

In Qingdao I got stopped a few times for misdemeanors, and the only time I had a problem was the time I thought it would be a good idea to speak Chinese and show I had spent the time to get to know China. From experience, acting dumb is much more effective = too complicated, off you go mate.

Interestingly I got stopped 3 or 4 times in Qingdao for driving with my lights on in the daytime. I always had my reasons, usually it was fog, once was because I had just got off the expressway where I had been running about 50% faster than anybody else. Quite a relief to find that he only wanted me to turn the lights off.

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