Talkback: Death penalty for illegal street racing

that is perhaps a tad harsh

Street racing at 8pm in shanghai hmmm use 2 live there 6 years ago,Traffic is crazy, Cars drive on the wrong side road ( Yeah been close to a head on a few times) cars, bus go through the red lights lets just say if they survived street racing in shanghai n can live to tell the tale then having a death sentence at the end of it , yeah thats harsh.
Also youre not allow anything over 250cc plus u cant ride on the motorway n some roads (crazy laws)

when I was in shanghai about 5 years ago the biggest bike allowed was a 150cc so every bike was a TZR 125 (taiwan copy version yamaha made under licence bored out from new to 150cc)
The guy I knew had a CB1300 then the chinese government changed the law banning anything over 150cc, so he had to hide the bike and only use it to street race at night, if he got caught the bike would be crushed. The only traffic in the part of shanghai I was in were taxi's no one had a car why would you coz all taxis were government subsidised and the taxi fair for most of shanghai was a fixed cost of £1. the only problem was trying to get a taxi which was available.

If you don't have a relevant image to post up, don't post one at all. What is that, a still capture from Biker Boyz?

Not that surprised to be honest. Everyone in the UK either thinks Chinese bikes are total crap or that they're like the Japanese bikes of the 1960's and that they'll get better. But what they're all missing out on is that the Chinese government hates motorcycles and is the only country in the world that is aggressively banning them from major cities, highways and even entire provinces. China will one day become the world's first motorcycle-free country.

If that's the case Peter Z and they want to ban all motorcycles, can you explain why there are so many Chinese bikes produced and more importantly imported to the UK, for the Chinese Government to ban them

The Chinese bikes you see in the UK are manufactured either by tiny no-name companies that don't have the economic or political clout to legally sell their bikes in China or by bigger companies that make most of their money selling bikes in China but want to make a bit more on the side by exporting them. The former will never go beyond making CG125 clones and the latter is dying a slow death as sales in China dry up due to increasing bans against motorcycles.

The poor blokes in this story are riding bikes that cannot be legally imported or registered in China.

Alot of the info provided are not exactly correct, in China, only cities banned motorcycles, not in the Rural areas, and considering China has a huge rural areas all over the country, so the demand for simple and economical Motrocycles are still in a big demand. last year, China produced over 25mil bikes up to 250 cc.

There are 2 levels of Banning Motorcycles, very few cities have a total ban such as guangzhou, Shenzhen that do not allow ANY motorcycles in the inner city regions. but most cities only have a restriction on motorcycles such as Beijing, Shanghai, they stop issuing Bike licenses in the late eighties but allow you to ride your bike if it has a legit license plate. but still majority of the bikes in these cities has no license or fake ones.

But there has been some relaxation of the law in Beijing and Shanghai since a few years ago, you can actually register a big cc motorcycle providing if you can get hold of a samll bike in the city that has a legit license plate and scrape this and presnet the papers with the newly imported bike doucments, then you can get a official license plate and use your bike in the city (there are some roads that you can't ride in with a Bike) but with a legir license bike, the cops can only give you a fine instead of taking yoru bike away.

For the last few years, Harley, BMW, Ducati, Benelli, Piaggio, Aprilia, MV has all opened showrooms in many cities, Harley sold over 1000 bike in China alone last year.

The restrictions are still there but it will slowly opening, buying a bike in China is more then double the price of the US, as there is a close to 80% various taxes, a legit biek license plate in Shanghai cost over US$12,000 (as Shanghai plates is same as cars and car plates has to be auctioned from the Gov't at this value).

In China, due to the Gov't has no interest and knowledge over how to control Motorcycles, so this ihas allowed a huge number of unconventional import of these used and new motorcycles into China in the last decades, we're talking about hundreds of thousands used bikes imported, recently, due to the extremely high Yen exchange, bike dealers are all coming to buy accident totalled bike in the US and fix it up in China and sell them as good bikes. also with the very expansive official imported biek prices, many people still prefer to buy used or new bikes from the US and unofficially imported into China which cost alot of problems are these bikes has no or fake licenses and when in trouble, they all fled and many times not to be found or got caught as in this reported case,

The biggest problem is, alot of these sport bike riders are young kids and these bikes has no insurance so there is accidents, the victimcan't get anything.

Serves 'em right. Hanging? too good for them. Should be done like that over here. All those people spoiling it for the rest of us. Stamp on their testes. Dress 'em in dayglo clothing and burn them at the stake.

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Ah, Mr Stealth, I didn't see you there until you were gone.

Hi I plan to write a book about illegal street racing in China. Can anybody help with contacts that are either active or retired?
Im in the UK.
Many Thanks

Dean Rinaldi