Technically anything over 250cc is illegal..........but TIC and it seems some local ideas preempt National rules.

WTO rules are being used against China in regards to bigger bikes, at this point they are resisting but as soon as the Chinese have a viable big bike I'm sure the regulations will be relaxed. As I understand Beijing is the only area where you can actually get a new imported bigger bike registered.

The Jialing 600 in 2 and 3 wheel varients is registrable in some areas. Frankie here has one and I've seen pictures of others with plates. I think this is the start of the opening up policy, the Govt want to have a player or two in place before they open up the market to all comers. And then they may do so in increasing displacement sizes.

New Chang 3 wheeler registrations are now stopped nationwide.......and it seems just as this regulation came to pass it seems it has become possible to get the Jailing 3 wheeler registered and plated......with the caveat that no all provinces are are obliged to do so.

Shanghai is particularly tough......no new CJ plates for about 5 years and same for two wheelers. CJ's cannot be transferred from one owner to another and the plates cannot be switched from an old bike that's been ordered scrapped to a new machine now. It's still possible I think to do this with 2 wheeler plates but you pay a premium to get them from the original owner if you want to run a bike in your own name. I heard that the going value was @ 20,000 RMB and up.......but as a foreigner you have the possibility of additional residence restrictions.

The value is based on the trade in value scheme the local Govt invented a few years ago to get bikes off the roads. After 8 years of ownership of the bike plates you could trade in the plates, scrap the bike and get car plates. This was attractive as car plates were going for @ 40,000 ++ RMB even though Beijing decreed this against it's regulations....... the auction of plates/registrations still goes on today.

What happened was the bike riders turned in the plates for the car plates, sold them back to the State, the State then auctioned them off, gave the money to the bike owner who then bought a smaller blue plated 50cc bike and pocketed the rest of the cash.........so one more car on the road, same amount of bikes buzzing around and another ill thought out policy hits the books. I believe they assumed people with bikes would trade up to cars.......but they just downgraded engine size and ate better.

Only when there is total gridlock in the cities and they've run out of space available for roads will they see the sense of two wheels again.............Downtown they even tried to ban the bicycle.