By this token, getting a car plate is determined either by personal wealth or God's luck. In either way, a car license plate is a valuable asset instead of a free public product. The price of a license plate thus continually rises, as can be seen from the experience of Shanghai, where the average bidding price for a Shanghai plate for personal consumption had risen to 73,872 yuan ($12,014) by March and Beijing, where the black market price for a Beijing plate is around 80,000 yuan.

The car plate lottery policy that decides how to distribute car license plates among citizens, not only affects the free trade of automobiles, it is also a way of redistributing wealth, so it should be done fairly and subject to strict scrutiny.

In terms of fairness, the Hangzhou authority's original reason for not providing advance notice of the policy's introduction was to prevent the hoarding of car plates for profit. However, this causes unfairness. The first unfairness is between those who received the information beforehand and those who didn't. Officials and employees who are close to the decision-making process had more chance of being able to get license plates in advance. The profits made through such information asymmetry are immoral and unfair.

The second unfairness is some will have to pay or be lucky enough to win the lottery in order to get a license plate, while others who obtained their license plates before 12 pm on March 25, did so for free and without a particular alignment of the stars.

The third unfairness is between different generations. The previous and current generations have obtained car plates for free or at a little expense, but as the city develops, car plates will be more valuable and harder to get, so future generations will have to pay more for their car plates.

Worse, suppose that the traffic congestion miraculously disappears in the future, it will be hard to abolish the policy because on the one hand, the government will not easily drop a profitable program; on the other hand, those citizens who have paid for car plates will be unhappy if others get them for free. So it is likely to become a long-term unfair burden for all citizens.

As to the principle of proportionality, it requires the act brings the lowest harm to the affected people and that all alternatives that would produce less harm have been exhausted. To address traffic congestion, other propositions should not be ignored, for instance, a staggered hours scheme that allows workers to start and finish work at different times, a congestion charge system that charges a higher price for driving a vehicle within a demarcated zone during peak traffic hours; no-car days in each week that forbid a category of cars from entering specific areas; optimizing the route system increase the carrying capacity of the road network.

Hangzhou did not try out these alternatives; instead it rushed into restricting car plates. It is not proportionate to the purpose. And during Hangzhou's decision-making procedure, there was little public participation. No public hearing was held, although it was not mandatory according to the current legal framework. No wide debate and discussion took place. People were so badly informed that they were shocked by the sudden release of the policy and had little option but to go on a buying spree.

Rule of law needs administration by law. Public policy should be drawn up within the framework of the law and go through a fair and open procedure that welcomes public participation and enables consensus.

The author is a fellow at the research office of Shunyi district people's court in Beijing.