These kinds of heavy-handed interventions seem to almost always lead to processes of waste and corruption -- ie so who gets to live in Shanghai? That will be de

These kinds of heavy-handed interventions seem to almost always lead to processes of waste and corruption -- ie so who gets to live in Shanghai? That will be decided by bureaucrats and lawyers which opens up cronyism. By contrast, previously the market provided an efficient, free-to-use, and arguably fair system that allocated the opportunity to whoever was willing to pay for it. People will say "but they need to tackle pollution, and congestion," and I'm in the Pigouvian camp that it is more fair and economically efficient to tax externalities themselves (the disease) rather than making heavy-handed and arbitrary rules. Anyways, in China this is not the worst thing their government is doing.