A man surnamed He who wanted to travel from Guangzhou to Chengdu on Feb 8 said he was approached by six scalpers at the station. Each offered to use his ID card information to buy him a ticket in exchange for between 130 to 200 yuan. "One told me that because I wanted to travel at the peak time there was no way I'd be able to get a ticket by queuing at one of the official booths," he said.

Under the pilot scheme, customers must call a booking hotline with their identity card information before being given a confirmation number to show at an official ticket booth.

However, in an article published in Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News on Jan 25, a reporter described how he bought a new identity-tagged ticket from a scalper. The reporter rang the hotline and was told the tickets he wanted were sold out. Yet when he handed over his identity card information to a scalper in Guangzhou Railway Station he was immediately given a confirmation number to buy tickets for the day and destination he desired.

So how are scalpers getting around the anti-scalping system?

"The new system makes things a little complicated but we have our ways," one huang niu explained to Yangcheng Evening News. "Initially, the tickets are under my name, but they are not printed with my name or ID card number. When people find me for tickets they give me their ID card information and their names are printed on the tickets instead."

The reporter added that the scalper refused to reveal how he reserves the tickets in the first place.

Huang Xin, an official at the Guangzhou Railway Group, which operates 15,000 ticket hotlines and handles more then 1.5 million calls at peak times, dismissed concerns that scalpers were getting tickets through the "back door".

Each ticket contains information about who called and booked it, who bought it at the station booth, who sold it to them, when and where, he told Nanfang Daily, a Guangzhou-based newspaper.

"Scalpers can keep ringing the hotline and reserving tickets, then sell on the confirmation numbers, but we have introduced strong measures to monitor the ticket-selling process. Video cameras are installed in every booth," Huang was quoted as saying. "The scalpers are lying when they say they have connections inside our group. They just want their clients to believe them."

Dai Xinming, a member of the Shenzhen municipal committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top advisory body, has been calling for an identity-tagged ticket system since 2003. If run correctly, he said the system should wipe out huang niu.

"India also has a spring rush but it has no scalpers. The reason is India has long installed an identity-tagged ticket system," he said. "If we increase the fee for ticket transfer, the cost of scalping will go up and scalpers will make less profit. This way we can get rid of scalpers."

Scalpers should be eliminated because they block the urbanization process, he said. "Farmers travel to cities mainly by train and bus. For urbanization to continue, we need to lower the cost of labor flow and get rid of anything that may add to the cost, such as scalping."

But the new system is not a fix-all solution, said Yang Tao, a procurator in Jiangxi province, writing in the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post. "For those powerful scalpers with connections, the system will only increase the cost of scalping and decrease the profit. It is not going to eliminate scalping," he wrote.