Draft:Civilian motor vehicle license plates of the People's Republic of China

The number plate of a civilian motor vehicle of the People's Republic of China refers to the legal sign registered with the statutory authorities that permits civilian motor vehicles to be driven on the roads within the territory of the People's Republic of China, and belongs to the number plate of a motor vehicle of the People's Republic of China. The number plate is usually hung at a specific location on the motor vehicle, and its number is the motor vehicle registration number. The coding system and plate currently in use has been in use since 1992, also known as the Type 92 number plate, and has been revised in 2008 and 2010.The issuance of number plates for new energy vehicles commenced on December 1, 2016, with the earliest pilot issuance in five cities, namely, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Jinan, and Shenzhen, and after which the pilot issuance area has been extended to other cities across the country.

On August 12, 2002, Beijing Municipality, Tianjin Municipality, Hangzhou Municipality and Shenzhen Municipality had piloted the registration of 2002-type motor vehicle number plates, but the issuance of such plates was stopped on August 22, 2002 on an emergency basis.

history
On October 6, 2008, a number of cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, began issuing self-selected motor vehicle license plate numbers. [3] The license plate is displayed in the same way as the 1992-style motor vehicle number plate, but the last five characters can be chosen by the owner, and the rules for encoding the number vary from place to place. For example, Beijing only allows 4 digits and 1 Latin letter,[4] while Shenzhen can have up to 2 Latin letters. At the same time, the original license plate number selection method[note 2] continues to be used, in conjunction with the self-selected license plate number method.

In 1949, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the public security organs around the world began to issue their own vehicle license plates, but the standard and numbering of license plates around the world are different.In October 1950, the automobile license plate was formally issued, using a sequential type of motor vehicle license plate, the number of the province as a unit, from small to large in order.Since 1960, the Ministry of Public Security to unify and standardize the size of the license plate, the standard color and material, and in accordance with the national provinces, municipalities, Since 1960, the Ministry of Public Security has standardized the size, color and material of the license plates, and arranged them according to the serial numbers of the provinces, cities and autonomous regions. Sequential motor vehicle license plate has gone through four generations.

In 1992, the Ministry of Public Security began a trial run of 1992-style motor vehicle license plates (the type of license plate now issued) in Urumqi and Daqing, and in 1994 began issuing them throughout the country. [1]

On October 6, 2008, a number of cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, began issuing self-selected motor vehicle license plate numbers. [3] The license plate is displayed in the same way as the 1992-style motor vehicle number plate, but the last five characters can be chosen by the owner, and the rules for encoding the number vary from place to place. For example, Beijing only allows 4 digits and 1 Latin letter,[4] while Shenzhen can have up to 2 Latin letters. At the same time, the original license plate number selection method[note 2] continues to be used, in conjunction with the self-selected license plate number method.

On November 21, 2016, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced that from December 1, 2016, new energy vehicle number plates would be issued on a pilot basis in five cities, namely Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Jinan and Shenzhen. Based on the public's consultation by the Traffic Management Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security from April to May 2016, the style with the highest number of votes was selected as the final style. The number plates of new energy vehicles have one additional digit, i.e. six digits, than ordinary vehicle number plates. During the pilot period, new energy vehicles newly purchased by the public and registered in the five pilot cities will be issued with new energy vehicle number plates; for new energy vehicles that have already been registered, in accordance with the principle of voluntary replacement, the vehicle owner will independently choose whether to replace the new style number plates. Newly purchased and registered new energy vehicles outside the pilot cities will still be issued with Type 92 motor vehicle number plates. At the same time, the Ministry of Public Security will also plan to study the improvement of the pattern of ordinary vehicle number plates[6].From 9:00 p.m. on December 1, the first new energy vehicle number plates were issued one after another in the five pilot cities, which were Su A-D09999 (Nanjing), Su B-D00100 (Wuxi), Shanghai A-D00806 (Shanghai), Guangdong B-F03030 (Shenzhen), and Lu A-D11111 (Jinan)[7 ] As of August 2017, 76,000 new energy vehicle number plates have been issued in five pilot cities. According to the arrangement of the Ministry of Public Security, since November 2017, Baoding, Hebei, Changchun, Jilin, Fuzhou, Fujian, Qingdao, Shandong, Zhengzhou, Henan, Zhongshan, Guangdong, Liuzhou, Guangxi, Chongqing, Chengdu, Sichuan, Kunming, Yunnan, new energy vehicle number plates issued; by the end of December 2017, in addition to the municipality directly under the Central Government, provincial capitals and autonomous region capitals to enable the city, at least one to two other cities in the provinces (districts) to enable the new energy vehicle number plates In the first half of 2018, new energy vehicle number plates were fully activated in all cities across the country[8].

In August 1986, the Ministry of Public Security began issuing fifth-generation motor vehicle license plates[note 1]. This kind of license plate imitates the Japanese vehicle number plate, divided into two lines. The first line of smaller characters, "provincial administrative name + two-digit area code" way to indicate the licensing authority, the order of the area code and the current "92-type" license plate area code in roughly the same order; the second line of 5-digit Arabic numerals, Latin letters, mixed rows. . In terms of plate color, small car number plates have white letters on a green background, large car number plates have white letters on a red background, foreign vehicles have red letters on a black background, and coaches have white letters on a blue background. Since these plates were first issued in 1986, they are also known as "Type 86".

In August 2002, Beijing, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Shenzhen piloted the "2002" motor vehicle license plate, which covers four types of vehicles: large automobiles, small automobiles, motorcycles and mopeds. This type of license plate can be numbered independently by the vehicle owner and consists of six Latin letters or numbers, increasing the number capacity by more than 100 times. The production of anti-counterfeiting technology has been improved. The entire process is computerized and digitized. The license plate has a built-in vehicle identification code and is bound to the vehicle and cannot be separated from the original vehicle. The original plan was to issue the plates in the above areas from August 12 to December 31, but it was called off after only 10 days for "technical reasons". Subsequent vehicle transfers will also be replaced with Type 92 license plates. It is said that the current traffic control monitoring system can not recognize the 02 type license plate violation. [2]

License plate styles and coding rules from different eras
In July 1986, mainland China started to use "Type 86" license plates. The format is modeled after the Japanese vehicle number plate: two lines of text, the upper line of small letters is the name of the province plus numbers, and the lower line is the five-digit number plate. All kinds of motorcycle number plates are 220×120mm, and automobile number plates are 300×165mm, except for public security vehicles, which are long plates with one line of text.


 * Small passenger cars, light goods vehicles: white letters on a green background;
 * Large passenger vehicles, heavy goods vehicles: white letters on a red background;
 * Vehicles towed by a motor vehicle without a power drive of its own: black lettering on a white background;
 * Agricultural vehicles: white letters on a yellow background;
 * Coach or test car: white lettering on a blue background;
 * All types of foreign vehicles: black background, or red in the case of vehicles in restricted areas.
 * Public Security Vehicle: red character GA (the first letter of the Chinese pinyin "public security") + two ID card provincial number + four license plate number.

The so-called "Type 92 license plate" was only introduced on a pilot basis in Daqing and Urumqi in 1992, and it was only in 1994-1995 that the large-scale abolition of Type 86 license plates was replaced by Type 92 license plates. For Guangdong-Hong Kong and Guangdong-Macao license plates, the "Guangdong 02" and "Guangdong 03" of Type 86 license plates were used until 2001, when they were replaced by "Guangdong Z-Hong Kong" and "Guangdong Z-Macao". They were replaced by "Guangdong Z-Macao".

The 1992 motor vehicle number plate consists of a simplified Chinese character representing the first level of an administrative district, followed by a Latin letter and a set of 5 digits or Latin letters. Usually, the Latin letter following the simplified Chinese character is what determines the importance of the city to the province, e.g., "A" is used for vehicles registered in the capital of a province (capital of an autonomous region) or the city center of a municipality directly under the central government. For example, "A" is used for vehicles registered in the city center of a provincial capital (the capital of an autonomous region) or a municipality directly under the central government, while cities other than provincial capitals will be listed according to their level of economic development and influence in 1994, starting from "B", and the letters of license plates registered from special economic zones will be listed in a more advanced order ("B" to "). D", such as Shenzhen for Guangdong B), and then from the population of prefecture-level cities and other factors to the alphabetical order [9]. The order of license plates in Fujian Province is determined by the clockwise position of the city on the map with Fuzhou as the origin, the provincial capital Fuzhou is A, and thereafter Fuzhou as the origin, according to the clockwise order of the cities on the map in a circle from Putian B to Ningde J. The order of license plates in Hubei Province is the order of the city's last time of provincial administration, the capital of Wuhan is A, Huangshi (1950) is B, Shiyan (1973) is C, Shashi A" is used for the city center of a provincial capital (the capital of an autonomous region) or a municipality, for example, it was under the jurisdiction of the province in 1949, but it was changed to under the jurisdiction of the prefecture in the middle of the period, and was restored to the jurisdiction of the province in 1979, so it is D, and so on. Generally speaking, a city other than a municipality directly under the central government usually corresponds to only one license plate letter, but a small number of county-level cities or municipal districts in some provinces have different license plate letters with their prefecture-level cities, usually because they were issued as a prefecture-level city, but then do not have the same license plate letters as their prefecture-level cities (e.g., Foshan City, Guangdong Province, has three different license plate letters: "E ", "X" and "Y" (of which X and Y have ceased to be issued since February 2018), and Kunming, Yunnan Province, which has both A and B license plate letters, the latter of which is the former prefecture-level Dongchuan City license plate (now Dongchuan District, which is no longer The alphabetical order is then based on factors such as the population of the prefectural cities [9]. (No longer issued), and provinces with a large number of prefectural cities may even use up to "Z" (Guangdong Province and Sichuan Province). There are also cities where the existing number plate segments no longer meet the demand due to the large increase in motor vehicle ownership, so there are cases where two license plate letters co-exist (e.g. Qingdao, Shandong Province has both B and U license plate letters)

In addition, to avoid confusion with the numbers "1" and "0", the letters "I" and "O" will not be used (except for the license plates of provincial organs and public security systems in some areas). (except for the license plates of provincial organs and public security system in some areas, for example, the license plate of Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau is "Yue O A0001", which is managed according to the number plate of police vehicles). The "O" plate is a civilian number plate police special section, began in the 1990s, enjoys the right of priority access to the road, some local government departments and related units competing for the use of the scope, repeatedly criticized by the public. 2003 Heilongjiang Province took the lead in the abolition of the "O" plate, and now there are 22 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions to abolish the "O" plate. Currently, 22 provinces, cities and autonomous regions have abolished this license plate [10].