Shanghai car plate auction hits historic high

Shanghai (CNS) -- Shanghai's March car plate auction last Saturday recorded historically high bids. All 8,000 licenses were sold, for between 58,300 and 58,625 yuan on average.

The only Chinese city to use auctioning to control the car license supply and therefore the number of cars, Shanghai is trying every means to contain the increasing rate at which new private vehicles are clogging their roads. The efforts are all endorsed as part of the city's plan to accomplish the greening of transportation.

The direct auction method, however, produces a side effect: license costs have risen sharply and continuously in the last ten months and have almost reached the ceiling a city resident might reasonably pay.

Licensed car owners are even attempting to make a profit from the boom by selling second-hand plates.

Data show that only about 32 percent of the 24,897 bidders at the March auction went home with what they came for, indicating a large number of plate hunters are going hungry.