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Hello :)
So I'm getting closer to getting legal. I finally got a license in the spring, and now I'm ready to get a number plate... especially since I finally got stopped about it for the first time.
(I'm in a historically low enforcement place for small bikes)
I know there's never one answer, but I'm wondering if there are any rules about punishments I might face.
If I try to register my bike for the first time when I've owned it for a couple years already, what are they supposed to do to me?
Re-education camp:lol8:Quote:
Originally Posted by mmj
Quote:
Originally Posted by mmj
So I'll update this myself.
I guess the forum has generally moved on from these kinds of questions.
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I didn't get any specific answers about this anywhere; it's just not a common situation, I guess.
But any Chinese friends I asked said they really doubted there would be any punishment. Certainly we all know they want everyone to get registered and be tracked everywhere.
So I just went forward and indeed there was no question of punishment for past driving.
The challenges it seems that anyone might face are:
1) If you didn't get a fapiao (发票) issued initially, you might have a problem getting it.
Unlike many cases of getting a fapiao, it's not just a matter of a signed and stamped receipt from the seller. For vehicles, apparently the fapiao includes what in the USA we would call the title. The seller has to go to the local government, declare the sale, and get them to issue the documents after - I think - paying a value-added-tax.
In my case, they just did it. But if they didn't do it, I'm not sure what you could do after so much time.
They didn't try to back-date it to the real sale date. They just put the current date; I'm not sure if that is actually sketchy. I didn't end up with a problem. But this does connect to #2...
2) Getting the inspection might be challenged.
It seems that - based on my one experience - maybe there is no provision for inspection beyond a few months after the sale. I didn't try hard to learn about this, since it's not to my advantage.
I had to go to a couple different places. The first place said they couldn't help me and gave me the address to a different place. The second place (actually a third, but anyways) also tried to just push me off, but a couple managers seemed to help me out and get everyone to just do it.
I think maybe I got some benefit of them wanting to be nice to a foreigner. I'm not sure if that benefit is necessary to get the inspection or just navigating the process.
Someone there started saying that the problem is it's way too late to get plates.
But then, my fapiao actually had a date of the same week... so maybe that saved it.
tl;dr:
So it looks like in this case, I didn't have any legal problems registering late.
But I'm not sure it is normally allowed because of inspection rules. You may need to shrug and smile your foreign face a lot.
It looks certainly better and easier to do it when you buy the bike.
(on a related note: I never considered doing it when I bought the bike because I didn't have a license - something I repeatedly heard was necessary. But I don't think I had to produce the driving license for the traffic police.
Perhaps it was necessary to buy the insurance, though - one of the registration requirements.)
I bought a bike new and did not take it in for plates till it was over a year old. They said nothing, they just registered and plated it. Was easy as pie here in Changchun.