A while ago I came across a white paper, released 10 years ago by Shanghai city planners, titled “Shanghai traffic development, a white paper”. I believe this paper officially started the “motorcycle discrimination” in Shanghai.

It has 4 pages divided in 2 chapters, with the first one describing the background of the paper and the second “Traffic development strategy”. Most thoughts in the paper are visionary and sensible, aiming to offer to its subjects “fast, safe, comfortable and clean” traffic services. Then it singles out motorcycles in the last part of second chapter as follows:

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Translation:
“Motorcycle as a means of transportation is flexible, convenient and speedy. Due to these characteristics it grows fast in numbers. However, a large number of motorcycles on the road would disturb the normal traffic flow and in turn become a threat to the safety of city traffic. It would lower the operational efficiency of the traffic and produce a relatively larger share of harms to the city environment as a whole. “

This is rather bizarre. Even when motorcycles are accurately described as the preferred means of transportation of the people, they are not treated as part of the normal traffic, to be managed and protected equally as all others on the road. Instead they are considered menaces to the general traffic. In short, they are singled out and discriminated against. It was unscientific. It did not invite feedbacks from the “people” which it is supposed to serve. This short paragraph in the white paper created the most expensive motorcycle license plate in the world as a direct result.