Rush For Beijing Numberplates

We’re just five days into the new year and the car market is already heating up the cold weather. Beijing City Government announced in November that they would ‘do something‘ about the traffic problems in Beijing in the new year which resulted in panic buying of automobiles in the final quarter of the year. This was great news for the dealers as they could raise prices by several thousand dollars and people would still buy them, then the axe fell on the Beijing car market – only 240,000 license plates would be issued in 2011 and only to those that have Beijing residency permits, i.e. those that live and work in Beijing but don’t have an official card were kicked out of the system. And to those that thought they would be able to get around the lack of a local Beijing plate by registering in Hebei, Inner Mongolia or Shandong – they were out of luck also, as all none Beijing plates are banned from being within the inner fifth ring road