Vehicle registration plates of China
Vehicle registration plates in China are mandatory metal or plastic plates attached to motor vehicles in mainland China for official identification purposes. The plates are issued by the local traffic management offices, which are sub-branches of local public security bureaus, under the rules of the Ministry of Public Security.
Hong Kong and Macau, both of which are special administrative regions of China, issue their own licence plates, a legacy of when they were under British and Portuguese administration, respectively. Vehicles from Hong Kong and Macau are required to apply for licence plates, usually from Guangdong province, to travel on roads in mainland China. Vehicles from mainland China have to apply for Hong Kong licence plates or Macau licence plates to enter those territories.
History
1986-series plate
In July 1986, the 1986-series Plates were put into use. The layout and format for them are listed out as follows:special-use vehicles, electric cars
Hong Kong and Macau vehicles are issued with plates for Shenzhen and Zhuhai, respectively. Red-on-black plate-bearing vehicles are only allowed to drive within said cities. White-on-black vehicles are permitted to drive within Guangdong province, while if the vehicles are issued with green or violet plates according to their types, they have no area limitations.
Public security vehicles are issued with single-line plates with the format GARR-####, where the RR is the regional code, and the following numbers are the serial number, with the "GA" in red.
The regional codes are as follows:
Note: Chongqing was separated from Sichuan as a directly administered city in 1997, and the 1986-series standard was abolished in 1997 as well, therefore Public security vehicles in Chongqing bear the Sichuan code of GA51, instead of the later-introduced GA50.
1986-series plates are allowed to have the first number in the serial replaced by a letter with a special meaning, such as T for "taxi", Z for 自备车, G for 个体户.
Current Series types
Common types
The current plates are of GA36-2014 standard, a further update of the original GA36-1992, made from GB/T 3880.1 and GB/T 3880.2-compliant aluminum material with a thickness of no less than 1.2mm or 1.0mm, or 200-220g dedicated watermarked paper with plastic sealing for automobiles and motorcycles entering the border on a temporary basis, or 125g white paper-card for temporary license plates. The plates accommodate a one-character provincial abbreviation, a letter of the Pinyin alphabet, and five numbers or letters of the alphabet. Previously, all licence plates had used the five-number designation. As the number of motor vehicles grew, however, the number had to exceed what was the maximum previously allowable—90,000 or 100,000 vehicles. Therefore, there had become a need to insert Latin letters into the license plate to increase the number of possible combinations. This was first done in the bigger cities with only one prefix. Nanjing, for example, began the change with only the first number, which increased the number of possible combinations to 340,000. Further changes allowed the first two places, or the second place alone on the plate to be letters, allowing 792,000 more combinations mathematically. More recently, cities have taken to having the third letter alone being a letter, the rest numbers.Permitted alphanumeric combinations per GA36-2014 standard are listed in the table below. Should the number of combinations issued exceed 60% of the theoretical capacity of its type, the combination next in the list may be put into use after approval from the Vehicle Management Office of the provincial Public Security authority and reporting to the Vehicle Management Office of the Ministry of Public Security.
Note: Y and N in this table reflects whether or not this combination type may be used in registration plates with 4 or 5 places for digits/numbers, while D and L represents any permitted digit or letter respectively.
| Order | Combination | 4 places | 5 places |
| 1 | DDDDD | Y | Y |
| 2 | LDDDD | Y | Y |
| 3 | LLDDD | Y | Y |
| 4 | DLDDD | Y | Y |
| 5 | DDLDD | Y | Y |
| 6 | DDDLD | Y | Y |
| 7 | DDDDL | N | Y |
| 8 | LDDDL | N | Y |
| 9 | DDDLL | N | Y |
| 10 | LDLDD | Y | Y |
| 11 | DLLDD | Y | Y |
| 12 | LDDLD | Y | Y |
| 13 | DLDLD | Y | Y |
| 14 | DLDDL | N | Y |
| 15 | DDLLD | Y | Y |
| 16 | DDLDL | N | Y |
The numbers are produced at random, and are computer-generated at the issuing office. Numbers with a sequence of 6s, 8s, or 9s are usually considered to be lucky, therefore special sequences like "88888" or "86888" can be purchased through auction. A previous licence plate system, with a green background and the full name of the province in Chinese characters, actually had a sequential numbering order, and the numbering system was eventually beset with corruption.
License plates have different formats that are issued to different vehicles:
| Vehicle Type | Example | Coloring | Issued to |
| Small/Compact Vehicles | White-on-Blue | Regular vehicles | |
| Small/Compact Vehicles | 京A·D12345 京A·F12345 | Black lettering on Gradient green | Start with D and A, B, C, E is for regular EV vehicles, start with F and G, H, J, K is for regular plug-in HEV vehicles |
| Large Vehicles | | Black-on-yellow | Vehicles longer than 6m or certified to carry 20+ passengers |
| Large Vehicles | 京A·12345D 京A·12345F | Black lettering, yellow for the province code, green for the rest | End with D is for large EV vehicles, end with F is for large plug-in HEV vehicles |
| Agricultural/Municipal vehicles | 京01-00001 北京A-00001 连港·A0018 民航A·A0125 | White-on-green | Mainly agricultural vehicles. Vehicles operating in transport hubs receive the "民航" or "X港" instead of the Chinese character and the first pair of digits. |
| Coach cars | Black-on-yellow | Cars belonging to driving schools | |
| Test car | 京A·0001试 | Black-on-yellow | |
| Temporary license | Black on patterned light blue | Cars eligible for on-road driving but have not received a license plate yet | |
| Temporary license | Black on patterned brown | ||
| Prototypes | 沪A·1234超 | Black on patterned light blue | |
| Foreigner-owned | 京A·10000 | White-on-Black | Cars belonging to foreigners, joint-stock companies, foreign companies and diplomatic staff. |
| Small Motorcycles | 54321 沪 · C 54321 | White-on-Blue | |
| Large Motorcycles | Same as above | Black-on-yellow | |
| Foreigner-owned motorcycle | Same as above | White on black | Discontinued from October 2007 |
Since October 2007, black plates are no longer issued for vehicles belonging to foreigners, as this was "deemed discriminatory" and instead standard looking blue plates are now issued. However, foreigners still are issued a separate dedicated letter/number sequence to denote that they are a foreign owned/registered vehicle—e.g. in Beijing, the foreign owned plates are in the 京A·#####, 京L·B####, and 京L·C#### sequence. The black plates are still issued to those who registered in both mainland China and Hong Kong or Macau, specifically in Guangdong province, which are in the sequence of 粤Z·####港/澳.
Registration combinations of written-off vehicles may be "recycled", or used again on a different vehicle only after 6 months from the write-off according to relevant regulations, but as a matter of fact, certain serials of number like 京A·##### in Beijing is not available for general public once recycled for unspecified reasons. In 2015, a former Commissioner of Beijing Traffic Management Bureau, the traffic branch of Beijing Municipal Public Safety Bureau, was sentenced for life, having been found guilty of corruption relating to fraud in issuing these licence plate combinations.