Vehicle registration plates of China

Vehicles from Hong Kong and Macau are required to apply for licence plates, usually from Guangdong province, to travel on roads in mainland China.

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 (zìbèichē, "self-reserved vehicle"), G for 个体户 (gètǐhù, "entrepreneur").

Therefore, there had become a need to insert Latin letters into the license plate to increase the number of possible combinations (for the full list of alphanumeric sequences permitted see 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.

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.

The plates’ combination of the Chinese People's Armed Police Force ("武警") begins with the pinyin wujing abbreviation WJ.

The 2012 series of CAPF vehicle registration plates is in the WJ P NNNNL pattern, where the stands for a Chinese character i.e. 京 for Beijing, serving as the provincial identifier, and the L denotes the first letter in pinyin of the branch of service.

[5] Communist party officials and People's Liberation Army members are also exempt from paying road tolls and adhering to parking regulations.

[6][7] According to Xinhua News Agency, "police officers are also reluctant to pull over drivers of military vehicles even if the drivers are breaking the law",[7][8] which is the reason behind an emerging trend in which individuals purchase counterfeit military registration plates to avoid being pulled over by police and to avoid road fees.

In order to protect the privacy of foreign diplomats, the government does not release information on embassy vehicles, so it is possible that some data in the list of plate prefixes below may not be correct.

Airports have licence plates with white characters on a green background with the designation min hang (民航; 'Civilian Air Transportation').

Vehicles featured in these shows often carry registration plates with non-valid provincial abbreviations and/or invalid typefaces.

Licence plates with a black background and the character 港 or 澳 in place of the last number are used for Hong Kong and Macau vehicles, respectively, when they engage in cross-border traffic to and from mainland China.

Interim licence plates are a piece of paper to be affixed to the front of the vehicle's window, usually valid for 15 days.

However, although the usage of "CHN", to designate China, was not permitted in the plates, that restriction, oddly enough, did not apply to the letters "PRC".)

In late August 2002 new 2002 standard plates had their issuance temporarily interrupted, officially for technical reasons, but actually because some number/alphabetical combinations of a controversial nature in mainland China were utilised.

One of the biggest controversies was when a vehicle with plate number USA-911 was spotted in Beijing, causing an uproar as it was taken to be a reference to the September 11 attacks, and as such was criticized as being disrespectful to Americans.

The Ministry of Public Security has announced on October 30, 2007, that the 1992 vehicle license plate system will be overhauled on November 1, 2007.

[12] On November 21, 2016, the MPS announced the New Energy vehicles license plates which have been instituted in Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Jinan, and Shenzhen since December 1, 2016.

The following lists all licence plate prefixes in use in the People's Republic of China, divided into four sections: municipalities, provinces, autonomous regions and others.