Big news that the Shanghai car plate average bidding price dropped down to 34226 RMB in May, almost 10000 RMB lower than last month’s 45000 RMB. The lowest successful bidding price is only 10800 RMB. Rumors said that the bidding process of car plate will be cancelled no later than July and there is almost no cost to get a car plate.
Resource:
The story was quite surprising, as I just cannot figure a way how the government can controll the total number of the cars if otherwise. Or they might find some other ways, but any means they take, by public, will definitely has a price, either explicitly or implicitly.
不是有这么句口号嘛：”不买日本车，不上上海牌” ;)
No Japs’ Car, No Shanghai Plate！
car ownership in singapore is extremely costly too. they have a thing called Certificate of Entitlement, which is similar to a car plate in Shanghai. Shanghai probably copied Singapore to regulate its car number. But the difference is that Singapore doesn’t have an automobile industry.
>I just cannot figure a way how the government can controll the total number of the cars if otherwise.
Maybe the government DOESN’T WANT to control the number of cars?
After all, the Chinese gov’t is betting heavily that the auto industry will be a major contributor to China’s economic development, just as it has been in the west. In the west, the number of car plates is not restricted at all.
Personally, I think such a policy, while economically beneficial on a national scale, may well be a disaster for Shanghai. Traffic is already terrible, imagine what it will be like in ten or so years when there are something like three or five TIMES as many cars on the streets! Let’s hope some sort of balance can be maintained.
Shanghai slim,
Encouraging massive car ownership in any Chinese city isn’t very well thought-out policy (at least while they are fossil-fuel based).
North America has long been struggling with horrible congestion, sprawl and environmental impact issues. Of course, the short-sightedness of our public officials leads only to the expansion of the road network, which in turns means yet more cars, sprawl, and pollution.
I think the big question in China is whether automobile ownership will ever reach similar levels. The economic benefits of a growing automobile industry will be quickly overshadowed by transportation gridlock and major pollution issues. Oil consumption is a whole other story all together.
Unfortunately, there is not much leadership coming from anywhere in the world right now in terms of an alternative fuel/transportation revolution.
China’s population density makes issues like these come to a head light years ahead of countries like Canada, whose sparsely populated expanse lets us get away with a pretty wasterful and irresponsible lifestyle.
The most common response I get to this sort of thinking is “well, your countries did it, so why can’t we?” I think this is just a dangerous lack of creativity. As China develops in the 21st century, I think it has the chance to lead in innovative urbanization and transportation (the huge population will make this a necessity).
In 2004, why bother copying all the stupid mistakes made in North America decades ago? There are different ways to be “modern”, and hopefully China can show us that.
an article on today’s Xinmin Evening News gives us very good alternative views.
http://www.news365.com.cn/jj/t20040524_82386.htm
for partial translation:
http://www.zhuqingsi.com/archives/20040524_too_many_cars.htm