Plate Spotting

Part of the Travel section of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s Practical A–Z

One way to pass the time while stuck in Běijīng’s all-day traffic jams is to look at who is stuck with you. Their licence plates will tell you.

Most plates are blue with white lettering and for the most part are for civilian use. They begin with a character indicating the municipality, province, or ‘autonomous’ region where the vehicle was registered, followed by a letter indicating the district or provincial city, then another letter and a sequence of numbers. Most plates around you will be blue and begin with the 京 character for Běijīng.

White plates with both red and black letters are for military, police, judicial and and assorted governmental use. Cars carrying these plates are not required to obey road signs, parking regulations, or the rules of the road in general, if it doesn’t please their drivers. ‘So, how’s that different from everyone else?’ you may ask. Unlike with ordinary drivers any policemen about will not dare challenge them.

Although driving in China is a full-contact free-for-all,­ sight of blatant abuse of privilege protected by these plates causes on the one hand much ire amongst ordinary people, and on the other fuels an industry in making fake military plates typically purchased by wealthy owners of smarter vehicles wishing to drive and park just as they please. On at least one occasion the on-line collective research called the ‘human flesh search engine’ (人肉搜索, rénròu sōusuǒ) identified eight vehicles using identical military plates, and the police confiscate thousands of such fakes every year.

Black plates indicate foreign ownership but are are being phased out except for diplomatic use.

京B plates are reserved for taxis, and
京OA for the Gōng’ān Bù (公安部) or Ministry of Public Security, whose vehicles are generally given plenty of space. 京卫 plates are for Běijīng’s military garrison.

Cars with blue plates from outside the capital will begin with characters often derived from the historical names for their regions:

Ānhuī 皖 (Wǎn)
Chóngqìng 渝 (Yú)
Fújiàn 闽 (Mǐn)
Gānsù 甘 (Gān)
Guǎngdōng 粵 (Yuè)
Guǎngxi 桂 (Guì)
Guìzhōu 贵 (Guì)
Hǎinán 琼 (Qióng)
Héběi 冀 (Jì)
Hēilóngjiāng 黑 (Hēi)
Hénán 豫 (Yù)
Húběi 鄂 (È)
Húnán 湘 (Xiāng)
Jiāngsū 苏 (Sū)
Jiāngxī 赣 (Gàn)
Jílín 吉 (Jí)
Liáoníng 辽 (Liáo)
Nèi Měnggǔ 蒙 (Měng)
Níngxià 宁 (Níng)
Qīnghǎi 青 (Qīng)
Shānxī 晋 (Jìn)
Shǎnxī 陕 (Shǎn)
Shāndōng 鲁 (Lǔ)
Shànghǎi 沪 (Hù)
Sìchuān 川 (Chuān)
Tiānjīn 津 (Jīn)
Xīnjiāng 新 (Xīn)
Xīzàng 藏 (Zàng)
Yúnnán 云 (Yún)
Zhèjiāng 浙 (Zhè)

Nèi Měnggǔ is Inner Mongolia, and Xīzàng is Tibet. Hong Kong and Macau have entirely different systems, and drivers crossing the border have composite Guǎngdōng plates that begin with 粵 and end with 港 (Gǎng for Hong Kong) or 澳 (Ào for Macau).

You’ll come across these historic names applied to regional cuisines as well, such as 川菜 (Chuān cài) for the hot and numbing flavours of Sìchuān, and 湘菜 (Xiāng cài) for the fiery dishes of Húnán.

The cars mounting the pavement to get round the traffic, or U-turning to escape the jam beneath signs forbidding such manoeuvres are likely to carry white plates, beginning with, in red:

Police 警 (Jǐng)
People’s Armed Police WJ
People’s Liberation Army 军 (Jūn)
Běijīng Military Region 北 (Běi)
PLA Navy 海 (Hǎi)
PLA Airforce 空 (Kǒng)

The PAP’s WJ are the pīnyīn initials of their Chinese name, 武警 (Wǔ Jǐng), and in 2013 other services also began replacing Chinese characters with pīnyīn initials in an entirely futile attempt to reign in military excess, prevent the auction of military plates to private individuals, etc. The 海 character was replaced with an H, and so on, a second letter indicating to which division of the navy the driver belongs.

Black plates beginning with a red character 使 are embassy vehicles. The first three of the following six digits indicate the nationality, and if the last three are 001 to 005 they indicate high status and diplomatic immunity, with 001 typically reserved for the ambassador’s vehicle.

You may notice plates with their last digit obscured in an assortment of clumsy ways. In theory from Monday to Friday one fifth of Běijīng’s vehicles are kept off the roads on a rotating basis: plates ending in 1 and 6, 2 and 7, 3 and 8, 4 and 9, or 5 and 0. The well-connected simply ignore this regulation. Wealthier families buy a second vehicle, others take the risk and pay the fine (said to be ¥100, making a maximum of ¥500 in a month if caught every single time), and still others simply obscure the last digit of their plates from speed cameras.

In times of pollution so high even the authorities have to pay attention, either odd- or even-numbered plates are taken off the road each weekday. Běijīng residents expect this to result in a surge in car buying, increased parking problems, and an increased flouting of regulations.

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