Allegedly, China’s enthusiasm for new cars has waned. Don’t tell that to a Shanghainese. In Shanghai, exuberant carbuying has been dampened by limiting the amount of license plates, which are auctioned off. In March, prices of new license plates hit a record high. The average bid for a license plate was 58,625 yuan (9,380 U.S. dollars), Xinhua reports.
Many attempts have been made to end the limitations in Shanghai and in Beijing, where license plates are assigned by a lottery. Rao Da, Secretary-General of the China Passenger Vehicle Association CPVA, appealed to patriotic feelings by saying that Chinese domestic brands are almost entirely pushed out of the Shanghainese market. “High priced license plates will affect domestic brands sales in the Shanghai market, and will eventually push them out of the city,” Da said according to Chinacartimes. True. It makes little sense to stick a $10,000 plate on a QQ which costs less than half of that.
Smells like a racket. Making plates artificially scarce is a nice setup for kickbacks to get one, or to get one with a “lucky” number.
It’s not just false scarcity, it’s for limiting the amount of cars being driven. Don’t you know that?
Do you know that China has beed described as the world’s most corrupt nation? Graft is institutionalized, and almost nothing there is what it appears to be.
I believe an electric car gets an exception from those plate restrictions.