From Cover, issue no. 341, November 12th, 2007
Translated by Zuo Maohong
Original article: [Chinese]

"The card has been with me for almost 20 years... It's really hard to say goodbye." says Zhang Jie with an awkward smile. "I can no more hear that unique sound when the card touches the swipe machine." He commutes from Wudaokou, a suburb in the northwest of the city, to Nalishi Road downtown.

Roughly 170,000 other Beijingers have traded in their monthly subway passes for the now ubiquitous public transportation cards. Fortunately for Zhang, with the new card he can enjoy the same 60 percent discount in bus fares and a low subway fare of two yuan per trip as other commuters.

Now, Zhang's Beijing hukou, or residential registration in Beijing, no longer entitles him to a privilege that those with hukou from elsewhere in China are not. The same transportation prices he's benefiting from now are shared by everyone in the city, no matter where their hukou is registered.

As Zhang recalls, the first time he used a monthly pass was in 1989, 11 years after the first monthly pass was adopted. At that time, the ticket was a joint monthly pass for electricity, bus ride, and subway ride and cost 10 yuan. It was easily available to anyone with a Beijing hukou and a proof of employment or studies.

"But the certificate had to specify the distance between one's home and either job or school. Only if that distance was longer than the set standard could the applicant buy a monthly pass," says Zhang. Compared with the normal subway fare of 0.3 yuan, commuters at the time could save significantly by using monthly passes.

In 1995, Zhang moved into a new home. His mother, who previously walked to work in about 10 minutes, had to then ride a bus for over two hours to work every day. It was difficult to buy a monthly subway pass then, since the Beijing Subway Company began to limit sales, as was reported, to guarantee the safety of subway operation.

At the time there were 200,000 monthly pass holders. In the following years, however, the figure didn't increase a little.

As demand rose and supply remained fixed, people had to use their connections to buy a ticket. Says one Beijing-based government official who once was involved in such activity and wishes to remain anonymous,  "There was no way to get a ticket unless your connections were really strong... a ticket only came with an approval note from the leadership of the subway company."

From this, a black market for monthly subway passes evolved. Ever since, Beijing subway has been littered with signs at gates and on train billboards, advertising the sale of passes. According to one person who has sold passes, "usually a ticket was sold for 400 to 700 yuan, sometimes even more than 1,000. But it only took ten months to recover the cost if someone bought a ticket at 500 yuan."

Zhang says that during college, classmates from other places had the impression that a monthly pass was a symbol of being local.

For exactly this reason, there have long been dissenting voices demanding the termination of this privilege for the minority. Xu Guangjian, vice-dean of the School of Public Administration at Renmin University, says Beijing already considered canceling monthly passes in 1998, as "quite a few monthly pass holders were not who the system was originally designed for". 

According to Xu, the tickets were initially dedicated to workers who commuted between suburbs and downtown and special social groups. But these rules became unstuck as time went on.

Chai Xiaozhong, deputy director of Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Committee, says, "that only a small group of people had access led to the [illegal market for them]. Also, they were actually not fully used. No more than 170,000 were frequently used, and only less than 100 belonged to residents who were dependent on government assistance."

Meanwhile, the subway companies had long complained that the large number of monthly passes were a financial drain.

While monthly passes were successively canceled in Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou, those in Beijing survived, albeit amidst controversy. "The biggest obstacle was the government’s concern about vested interests of the holders." Xu says.

At the beginning of the year, Beijing finally bade farewell to the 50-year-old system and compensated the holders with a low fare policy. Some joke that the public transport system in Beijing was finally actually "public".

The withdrawal of subway monthly passes was confirmed at a hearing on rail traffic ticket pricing on Sept. 26th. The hearing simultaneously decided on a two yuan subway fare. "A low fare policy provides the fundamental condition for calling off monthly passes." Chai says.

Regulators hope that the policy will increase benefits to all citizens, regardless of their hukou. As one governmental official comments, "this is really groundbreaking in that public services are throwing off the shackles of hukou."

Now monthly passes have become a curiousity for collectors. Just like many other former monthly pass owners, Zhang saved the card as a precious keepsake.