How are Harley's legal in China?

[hclayjones]

Oh well, remember the old Beijing days with self acclaimed King of the CJ's (GG) and his sidekick Master Donghai (CJ) milking the naive foreigners arriving in Beijing and overseas....

Pal
if that is a sly reference to me, then you should know, I have never sold any CJ's or CJ parts to foreigners (although I did sell to Jim Bryant --sidecar tubs--- at a good price) and Leo and a few others dealers....as far as I know, the Donghai was not all that popular in side China and mainly my efforts was to outside owners and places like Barbers who I provided manuals and parts to rebuild a DH750.
If you have something to say, then out with it. And in reference to Gerald, never was there a person who extended his home and help to me when I arrived . He is a good friend and cheap shots are beneath this board. If you want to talk this out, then I am available.

[Pal]

reference to me, then you should know

No finger pointing, I didn't say who was to blame - but if the cap fits, wear it.

Interesting to note about a month ago there was a story on the news here in Australia about stolen Australian motorcycles ending up in Hong Kong. Little did they know most of those stolen Aussie MC's were ending up in mainland China well they used to. Remember there was a certain town in Guangdong where you could pick up cheap japanese MC.

There has been a huge trade going on with all sorts of dubious motor vehicles for decades (not only limited to CJ bikes). Greater Tianjin area and Guangdong province were notorious for "grey import" motor vehicles of all sorts (2-4 wheels) but good on them putting some sort of end to the dubious trade.

Legal import HD bikes were for a long time by far the market leader in China but loosing market shares slowly but very steady due to broader selection on bike brands and model, the more - the merrier!

[Jonsims]

Never was any ban on motorcycles over 250cc.. You can import a new bike if you want.. It's going to cost you the price of the bike again and only if you live here.. You just need the paper work which then the tax people will issue with a hege zhen.. after you've paid all the tax and duty.. Oh.. you need a driving license and insurance too..

In sincerely apologise if this is a done to death topic.

I read the other day that Harley Davidson has 'recently' opened legit sales in China. I also discovered a store in my town that's selling Harleys, Indians and so forth.

My understanding is that there's a national prohibition on bikes over 250cc and that to get them on the road without attracting attention, you had to buy a similarly looking bike and do a dodgy with swapping the plates.

I can't believe that Harley would stoop to selling 250cc bikes. Has the 250 rule been changed or is Harley selling them under some technicality of "not for use on actual public thoroughfares hahah you still need to do the dodgy"?

Cheers,
A slightly drunk bmic

[ZMC888]

Never was any ban on motorcycles over 250cc.. You can import a new bike if you want.. It's going to cost you the price of the bike again and only if you live here.. You just need the paper work which then the tax people will issue with a hege zhen.. after you've paid all the tax and duty.. Oh.. you need a driving license and insurance too..

There was a ban on motorcycles over 250cc, and for a while anything over 150cc that was not some cruiser type machine was hard to find.

There were two categories of import bigger bikes, legal grey imports and illegal grey imports aka Guangdong death traps. Mostly the legal bikes were 1990-98 400cc bikes, such as the CB400, with their non-Honda Japanese brethren of a similar ilk like the XJRs and some 600s. Then there were the totally illegally imported bikes. They left one bike that you could legally grey import at this time, being the GSX250.

But that doesn't mean that big bikes couldn't be registered, Suzhou Jiangsu, and Tianjin made money from registering obviously iffy impossible to be genuine big bikes. Pre-2006 many provinces were put under pressure to ban big bikes and many, many previously legal bikes had their plates pulled by the police. This was not a national policy but a consistently followed series of provincial level policies

This all changed in 2006, but in many places only became effective in 2008, big bikes were made legal again, probably for various reasons. Mostly that Jialing wanted to manufacture a 600, and rich people ride Harleys.

sources: discussion with many, many owners of legal bikes that had plates pulled. Some kept their plates due to being mostly hidden or rarely ridden. Seen the documents, and discussed this many times with people in motorcycle clubs and motorcycle shop owners.

Disclaimer: TIC, many things are hard to know, even if you are Chinese or speak fluent Chinese. There is disinformation and incorrect facts on the Internet and many people imparting incorrect 2nd hand knowledge, these are the best known facts as drawn from multiple sources, both in Chinese and English conversation. There still could be inaccuracy, which is the nature of the culture of China.