All license letters and numerals valued the same

Are some alphabets and numerals superior to others? The answer is "yes" for Song Jianguo, former Beijing traffic police chief. On Monday, Song was accused in court of taking 24 million yuan ($4 million) in bribes by misusing his power to grant license plates starting with "Jing A" or "Jing A8", which had been frozen for more than a decade, to his "customer friends". In auto plates, "jing" is the Chinese character shortened for Beijing.

Song received about 100,000 yuan for every such license plate he approved, and his "friends" sold them at higher prices to other people. In the black market, a license plate starting with A8 following the Beijing character could be worth about 800,000 yuan today.

Cars registered before the late 1990s, when private cars were not common in the country and most of the cars belonged to State organizations, had number plates starting with "Jing A" and five numbers, and the people who owned them could reuse them on new cars after discarding the old ones.