Many Roadblocks to Car Ownership in Shanghai

Want to drive in Shanghai? Better not be too short, weak in the arms, colorblind or suffering from high blood pressure, nervousness or an inability to jump into the air with bent legs and then land without wobbling. Most of all, you cannot have a missing or broken thumb. Otherwise, your chances of sitting in the driver’s seat in China’s fast-paced economic capital will be nil.

Discrimination against bodily imperfections is probably the last thing foreign car makers anticipated in their desire to surmount China’s prohibitive tariffs and the regulatory hurdles keeping them from affixing wheels to the world’s largest car-less population.

But as General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and a host of domestic auto makers begin to roll out inexpensive compact cars on the eve of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, they may be surprised to learn of the separate hurdles many Chinese have to clear before being able to purchase a vehicle.

Because automobiles have only recently been resurrected in this Communist country as a politically correct object of desire, most people are adults by the time they sit behind a steering wheel for the first time. And what they must go through can seem incomprehensible by Western standards.

Despite its relative wealth, for example, Shanghai has a very small pool of privately owned cars, lagging way behind those in Beijing and Guangzhou. From passing a driver’s test to bidding for a license plate, this modern metropolis has some of the toughest restrictions in the country. In part, authorities insist, that’s because the city is already so crowded.

To start, there can be no fathers teaching sons to drive or friends teaching friends. Everyone has to register at an official driving school and fork over about $500--a hefty sum in a country with a per capita income in the neighborhood of $800. That covers roughly three weeks of classroom sessions, more than a month of behind-the-wheel training and three separate road tests. Finding time to squeeze all this in depends on how nice your boss is and how many weekends you are willing to give up.

But before you can learn anything, you must pass a complicated physical exam that feels in equal parts like a trip through an amusement park and a tryout for astronaut training.

At Shanghai’s No. 2 Testing Center, about an hour from the city center, some 40,000 people jump through the hoops every year in hopes of snaring a driver’s license. For the unlucky, it is an embarrassing way to learn that they don’t measure up.

Li Fang is a 20-year-old student. Recently, she went to take the test with some friends and learned as she stood in her stocking feet that she failed to make the height requirement for a woman--1.5 meters, or slightly below 5 feet--by less than an inch. She arched her back and pulled on her neck like a yodeler. She begged two inspectors to verify the results. But it was a no-go.

“My father wanted me to learn so he could buy me a car and let me drive him around,” the dejected Li said as she laced up black shoes with thick rubber soles that would have easily put her over the top. “All I want to do is drive a small car, not a big truck. I had no idea they had this rule.”

Down the hall, Fang Yonghua was sweating through his leather jacket. The 46-year-old laid-off watchmaker had a job offer as a chauffeur. He knew how to drive but didn’t have the proper paperwork. It took him two hours by bus to get to the testing center--only to be rejected on sight. His right thumb didn’t meet specifications.

“But I could fix watches and handle very detailed instruments. They didn’t even give me a chance to prove what I could do. This is really not fair,” Fang said as he haggled with the inspectors, who wore long white robes and insisted that rules are rules.

As a teenager, Fang answered the call of Chairman Mao to “learn from the peasants and workers.” He apprenticed at a factory, where a careless worker allowed a machine to cut him. He was only 16. Doctors fixed his wound by removing one of his big toes and attaching it to his thumb. The result doesn’t look great. But Fang said it does everything he needs it to do, including grip a steering wheel, which he did when he worked briefly in New Zealand.

Even some of the staff at the testing center wonder how necessary it is to make driving candidates vault over 14 obstacles. Those include: Lifting weights to show arm and hand strength. Sticking your head behind black velvet curtains to face blinding headlights, to see how well your vision adjusts. Pressing buttons with both hands and feet, as on a video game, to see how quickly you respond to visual and auditory stimuli.

“I know overseas they only test your vision. Here in China, if you can’t hear well in one ear, you can’t drive. I think there’s no need to be that strict,” said the woman operating an industrial-sized hearing booth.

Another inspector proudly declared that the machinery the center uses is state-of-the-art equipment from Japan. For example, if you are found to have high blood pressure, the staffers can give you a cardiogram on the spot and haul in a specialist to determine whether you’re prone to strokes or just temporarily scared stiff by the exam.

“Driving is a nerve-racking job. We cannot be lenient. If someone has a bad heart and gets nervous on the road, they could hurt themselves and the people around them,” said Liu Junlan, the director of the center.

Rigorous as this system is, it is still easier to maneuver through than the path to vehicle ownership. In Shanghai, about 500,000 people have licenses in their pockets but no cars. Buying one is easy, they say. The problem is, will you have enough cash left to buy the plates that allow you to get on the road?

Unlike other major Chinese cities, Shanghai’s government sets a strict quota to control street congestion. This year, the total of private cars in Shanghai grew by only 14,000--the same as the number of lucky people who placed winning bets at the city’s monthly public auction for license plates. There you get one chance to make a secret bid, and if your price is too low, you must wait another month for another shot. While the November quota was set at 1,700 plates, December’s shrank to 1,000.

Xu Qianren, 40, and his wife have passed all their driving tests and set their eyes on a new family sedan made by a Chinese joint venture with Toyota. But they’ve put off buying because “I could buy the car any time, but if I don’t have a plate, it’s the same as if I don’t have a car,” the lighting fixtures retailer said as he surveyed the auction’s crowded waiting area one recent Saturday.

He had placed two bids already, each time missing by about $100. The winning numbers sometimes start as high as $2,000. Ordinary people who feel that the fee is unjustified often choose to forgo a car purchase and hope the system will change, maybe after China officially joins the WTO.

According to various studies, a Chinese consumer now pays as much as 30% more than an automobile’s sticker price for various fees and taxes. Then there are the expensive and poorly regulated costs associated with maintenance, parking and road tolls--not to mention gasoline and insurance. For many urbanites, a cab remains a much cheaper and more sensible option.

Some experts say that Shanghai’s population density and scarcity of land give the city no choice but to put the brakes on the speedier arrival of a car culture.

“Like learning English and using computers, a driver’s license is a must-have status symbol, especially for young people,” said Zhu Weimin, a driving instructor who has seen his school’s student body grow from a few dozen two years ago to more than 1,000 a year. “If the licenses were free in Shanghai, the streets would be paralyzed.”

But cheaper cars are definitely coming, and the government needs to figure out how to improve driving conditions. This is especially important for domestic car makers, who will face strong competition from foreigners after WTO entry, said Chen Lifan, a professor at the automobile department of Tongi University in Shanghai.

“They can see the car market is not doing as well as it should. They know if they don’t relax the restrictions, it’s all going to die,” Chen said.

Still, Chen also urged critics to be patient. China’s enormous potential auto market cannot blossom overnight, he said. If it did, he warned, the result would be environmental disaster, not just for China but for the world.

That’s why, as inspector Ni Liangjun orders the line of applicants outside his office to take off their shoes, bend over, jump, flex their fingers, rotate their necks and look into his eyes, he sees no absurdity whatsoever in the situation.

“In the West, even if you have no legs, they make special cars for you to drive,” Ni said.

“But in China,” he went on, “we have too many people. Too many drivers. We cannot let everybody on the road.”