Bill Walker

    APPARENTLY Shenzhen has implemented a new parking payment scheme. Now, when you use street parking, you can pay using an iPhone or Android smartphone. You can fill your parking funds with AliPay, UnionPay, or other methods. So far, so good. We all appreciate that we need to pay for city services.

    Of course, I discovered this new rule when I received a parking ticket for parking on the street where I have parked dozens of times over the past two years with no issues. The parking ticket, according to Shenzhen Traffic Police’s website, is for 500 yuan (US$80).

    I had one of my colleagues translate the information on the ticket and went to the website listed on it to sign up for the new parking app and register my car so that I could follow the rules. I also wanted to give some feedback about the lack of information and communication from Shenzhen traffic police about their implementation of this new policy. There were a few issues:

    — I can’t register on the website to send “inquiries or feedback” without having a Chinese “ID number.” Foreigners do not have the 14-digit ID number, just our passport numbers as an ID for government services. Passport numbers do not work as an “ID number” on the website.

    — I can’t pay my parking ticket without registering, which again, requires an “ID number.”

    — The app to pay for parking is in Chinese, and the banking interfaces to fund the parking are all in Chinese.

    So now, yes, the government has made it much easier for foreigners to get a driver’s license and driving permit, with the tests being in English and improving greatly over the past few years. The local car leasing companies have made it much easier for us to have a car for a longer period. But here is another brick wall for us to find our way around: we can’t park legally.

    Until the parking scheme accounts for (1) foreign drivers without ID numbers, (2) drivers without an Android phone or iPhone, and (3) alternative ways to add funds to a parking account that can be accomplished in English, this new scheme is unfair and should not be enforced.

    Shenzhen will not be an “international city” until it stops treating foreigners, especially foreigners living and working here, as second-class citizens.

    (The author is an IT technology and globalization expert currently based in Shenzhen.)