Electric bicycle license plates, the chains of the people. Who is to blame for the electric chicken besieging the city?

free discussion
1

Editor’s note: This is an old news article written in December 2024. Recently, the regulations regarding electric bicycle license plates are about to be implemented, so I am posting it here for discussion.

According to the Guangdong Provincial Transportation Management Bureau, as of November 2024, Guangdong Province has registered and licensed 25.86 million electric bicycles. Since the beginning of this year, there have been over 9,400 traffic accidents related to electric bicycles, resulting in 1,195 deaths, with the number of accidents increasing by 2.7% and the death toll decreasing by 11.2%. In response to this situation, as one of the cities with the largest number of electric bicycles in the province, Guangzhou recently announced “timely implementation of total volume control for electric bicycles,” and at the end of this year, it will enforce the “Guangzhou Electric Bicycle Management Regulations,” which comprehensively regulate the production, sales, maintenance, registration, passage, parking, and charging of electric bicycles. Additionally, the city has introduced a new measure, stating that next year in the first half, it will launch dedicated license plates for electric bicycle delivery services, which can only be applied for by relevant companies and are limited to use by their employees. Currently, Guangzhou has about 200,000 registered delivery riders, with around 120,000 active riders shuttling through streets daily. These delivery companies, relying on such regulations and the already common practice of signing labor contracts and illegal employment, further pressure delivery riders to accept tighter control, thereby enabling companies to further exploit these already struggling workers. Guangzhou also enforces a speed limit of 15 km/h for delivery vehicles; although officials say they will urge platforms to relax delivery times, it is unrealistic to expect the bourgeoisie to voluntarily reduce profits, and fierce competition among capitalists only drives companies to shorten delivery times to gain advantages in the industry and survive. Therefore, relaxing delivery times is essentially impossible; the real goal is for companies to reduce the actual wages of delivery riders by restricting the application and use of electric bicycle license plates, thus increasing their profit margins.
Beyond stricter requirements for delivery riders, Guangzhou traffic police are continuously tightening control over electric bicycle users. Over 200 surveillance devices have been installed citywide, combining on-site penalties and non-contact evidence collection to enhance law enforcement. However, traffic police still justify their fines with lofty words: “The purpose of penalties is not to punish but to raise safety awareness and promote safe travel.” For riders who obscure their license plates, police have devised a solution by installing dedicated license plates with RFID chips, allowing traffic management departments to “monitor the road passage of electric vehicles in real-time, quickly detect traffic violations, and promptly eliminate safety hazards.”
Data shows that in 2021, 76.45% of respondents in Guangzhou used electric bicycles daily for work or school. In 2023, the average daily trips by electric bicycles in Guangzhou reached 6.85 million, a 14% increase year-on-year and a 72% increase compared to 2019, making it 2.4 times the number of trips by regular public transport. Among them, the central urban area saw an average of 3.39 million trips daily, a 149% increase from 2019. Why do so many people need to ride to work? This can only be attributed to the over-expansion of the city. As the city with the largest influx of labor, Guangzhou’s use of rail transit and conventional buses decreased by 13 percentage points since 2019, yet subway daily passenger flow remained above the 2019 level. The continued growth in electric bicycle trips indicates that more workers are coming to Guangzhou seeking jobs, and those who have left their hometowns to work in Guangzhou can only commute on relatively inexpensive electric bicycles. This phenomenon has been exploited by reactionary media to smear workers as part of the so-called “electric chicken city siege,” while local regulations and measures are merely superficial solutions. Under reactionary rule, the widening urban-rural gap can only lead to more workers flooding into major cities. The so-called “urban disease” of city sieges will not be resolved until reactionary capitalism that causes the widening gap is overthrown, and the working people seize political power to build their own homeland, thereby escaping the fate of being controlled and oppressed.

Image
Image900×674 190 KB

https://m.gmw.cn/2021-09/14/content_1302578277.htm

https://www.gz.gov.cn/zwfw/zxfw/zggfw/content/post_10031418.html

4 Likes
被野蛮的中修罚没一大笔
2

The majority of working people cannot afford cars and instead ride electric scooters, so the so-called “rectification” of electric scooters is essentially a crackdown on the working class. Not wearing a seatbelt while driving only results in a 2-point deduction, running a red light is a 6-point deduction, and you can even reduce points through “learning.” However, not wearing a helmet can lead to immediate fines and vehicle confiscation, and some localities’ fines and confiscations have even reached hundreds of thousands of yuan :enraged_face:

2 Likes
3

That’s exactly right. Recently, as the end of the month approaches, traffic police have come out to boost their performance, which is very reactionary. As a food delivery rider, I’ve noticed more traffic police on the roads in my city lately. Last week, I was fined 20 yuan for running a red light. Several auxiliary police officers stopped me, afraid I would run away. There were many electric bike riders around me who weren’t wearing helmets, carrying passengers, or, like me, running red lights. They gave warnings, made people watch videos, or fined them depending on the situation. The most disgusting thing is that these bastards don’t even pretend anymore. When I was stopped, the officer asked if I still had orders to deliver. He said I might have to wait more than ten minutes because many people were queued ahead to be processed. When they finished and I was about to leave, I overheard the officers saying, “I still have five more, almost done.” Later, when I checked the payment information for my fine, the recipient was the local finance bureau. It’s clear that they are purely after fines; the whole “safety” thing is complete nonsense.

8 Likes
4

We are the same here. Recently, the traffic police have been frequently deployed, often launching a “full-scale operation” that completely blocks all the main nearby streets. They are checking all the yellow-plate motorcycles. Some riders said in the group chat: even those with a driver’s license get checked. The traffic police pulled over several motorcycles, you could say they “returned fully loaded”!

2 Likes
5

So many, after reading these news articles I finally understand what “attacking the working people” means.

6

Many places have even more issues. For example, in a certain coastal city, traffic police have found “illegal electric bike driving” behaviors—such as carrying passengers, forgetting to wear helmets, running red lights, and speeding, etc. They even confiscate the electric bikes, forcing working people to spend nearly a thousand yuan to redeem them. However, many working people’s electric bikes are not worth that much money, so in the end, they either pay to get them back or have their bikes resold at a low price by the corrupt police. No matter what, they manage to make a big profit :enraged_face:

2 Likes
7

Not only these basic fines, but some working people suffering from capitalist exploitation gather together for dinner and drinks after work. After drinking, when they ride electric bikes home, they still get caught by the traffic police; the government and these traffic police, under the pretense of protecting the personal safety of the people, end up imposing fines and confiscating electric bikes, further joining forces with the bourgeoisie to exploit the people’s blood and sweat.