Quote Originally Posted by Steve_R View Post
So with that in mind, what happens if the former owners just decide to destroy the bikes and not bother selling off their registration or transfering to a car?
Euphonius is correct - it would be an exceptionally rare event, IMHO, that an owner of a legal plate on a junker, or the owner of a plate that is at the end of its 11 year lifespan, would be unaware of the plate's market value.

The "rule" in Beijing is that when you destroy a bike, you have a 6 month timeframe to register it on a new, legal bike (i.e., meeting C3 emissions standards). If you don't, the plate lapses (i.e., then the total number of legal bikes would be 99).

This happened with many sidecars in Beijing (including one of mine). Sidecars are a 3-wheel vehicle (different type of registration). Most in Beijing were a 1997 registration, expiring in 2008. Unfortunately, in 2008, there was not a replacement sidecar being manufactured that could be registered. Therefore, if you destroyed your sidecar, there wasn't a new sidecar available to put the new 11 year plate on. Many sidecar riders in Beijing are riding around without legal plates.

You also come across the situation where a legal junker has not been tested/inspected for several years. The penalties & fees add up very quickly, into the thousands of rmb. Additionally, a person's traffic fines have to be cleared before a plate can be transferred - some people have outstanding fines in the tens of thousands of rmb - there was even one case that hit the news of a guy who had several hundred thousand rmb in outstanding fines. Damn traffic cams! So, those plates would obviously lapse.

Quote Originally Posted by Steve_R View Post
If there are multiple bikes destroyed in this way, does this increase the quota of available license plates that could be potentially re-transfered to a brand new bike?
The two main agents in Beijing used to have a large inventory of plates within this 6 month timeframe. With the tremendous recent demand in Beijing, however, the agents now need to find legal bikes that can be destroyed (hence, the several week delay for many new purchasers getting plated). But there are lots out there, as is evidenced by the many online ads for used junkers with legal plates. Best price I've recently seen is 10K for an A plate on a junker - but add in the scrapping fees, reg fees, time, effort, etc., and you're up around 12K.

I asked a senior policeman, once, how many 京A plates are out there. He wouldn't tell me the exact number, but said it was less than a hundred thousand. A tiny number compared to the several million cars in Beijing.