Regulating Automobile Growth in Chinese Cities

China’s astronomical growth in automobile conceals significant variations between cities. While Shanghai and Beijing each had about 2 million motor vehicles in 2004, by 2010 Beijing has 4.8 million and Shanghai only 3.1 million. Vehicle owners made up 38% of Beijing households in 2011 in contrast to 18% in Shanghai. Crucial historical and present policy differences influence their effectiveness, revenue, efficiency, equity, and public acceptance. Two decades ago Shanghai opted for a monthly license auction to control vehicle ownership, while Beijing had little control over usage or ownership until the 2008 Olympics. Shanghai’s active and early policy intervention helps explain the difference in ownership growth.

Extraordinary growth calls for extraordinary measures. Boldness in both infrastructure development and policy design seems commonplace in China's urban transportation arena. This project, however, aims to present some of the subtleties in these bold designs using Shanghai license auction policy and Beijing's license lottery policy as a case. Subtleties exist in public attitude towards government policies, in the pricing mechanism and revenue consequences, in the purposeful policy leakage, and in the contrasting equity and efficiency orientations. 

Related work

• Tracy Chen and Jinhua Zhao (2013)  "Bidding to Drive: Car License Auction Policy in Shanghai and Its Public Acceptance", Transport Policy, doi: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2012.11.016
• Zhan Zhao, Jinhua Zhao, Qing Shen (2013) "Has Shanghai’s Transportation Demand Passed Its Peak Growth?", Journal of the Transportation Research Board, accepted on Feb 22, 2013
• Jinhua Zhao and David Block-Schachter (2013) Lotteries vs. Auctions: China’s Experiments in Managing Automobile Growth, Asia Pacific Memo #215 Apr 2013

• T. Chen and J. Zhao (2013) Shanghai’s Non-local Vehicles as A Dilemma in Policy Transfer from Singapore, Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
• Zhao, J. and T. Chen (2013) Car Owners as Supporting Constituency for Car Deterring Policies: Preference Variations in Shanghai’s Car Licensing Policy, Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
• Campbell, R. and J. Zhao (2013) Prestige on Wheels: Beijinger Life Aspirations and Implications for Transportation Planning, Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. 

Working papers

• Zhao, J., D. Block-Schachter and T. Chen (2013) Purposeful Policy Leakage: Legitimacy and Intentionality of Non Local Vehicles in Shanghai
• Zhao, J., T. Chen and D. Block-Schachter (2013) Superficial Fairness of Beijing’s Car License Lottery Policy
• Zhao, J. and Z. Wang (2013) Urban Transportation Policy Transfer in China: an Interview-Based Survey
• Zhao, J., J. Wang and T. Chen (2013) Hybrid Model in Guangzhou: A Before-and-After Implementation Comparison

[Image: Chang'an avenue in Beijing by Australian Cowboy]