Hong Kong won't work as you can't cross the border HK / PRC freely with a motorbike bought in HK. Quite a few cities in South China's Guangdong ban motorcycles (Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, etc.) and lets not forget the necessary China Driving License issue...
Not really a good situation as Mainland China does not recognise overseas driving license and international driving permits. Would not recommend driving / riding without a Chinese license as it's a well know fact that quite a few foreigners ended up in detention for up to 15 days on the spot without any court hearings and booted out of the country afterwards (not able to return to Mainland China on any type of visa for 5-10 years). This happened to short term visitors and resident "expats" holding work permits and Z visas alike.
Some time ago rental car companies like Hertz / Avis in China were able to obtain temporary driving license for foreigners (short term visitors) renting a car through them and the temporary driving license was interlinked with the rental car and actual rental period. They only issued temporary China driving license for cars - not for motorcycles!!!
Do not listen to any so called "visa / driving license agents" in China offering to assist or help out, they provide you with fake documentation for thousands of RMB (Chinese Yuan) and some of them driving licenses look like drawn with a black crayon by a five year old.....
Own motorbike through temporary import, unfortunatly only legal way as of today is either going solo (very expensive) with a government appointed guide through a licensed tour operator for China travel and / or find a group of foreign China travellers that did all the ground work already and join them to lower the costs involved (many threads going on the internet incl. HUBB).
Be warned, TIC = This Is China and everyone is after your $$$$'s....
Side-note, have a read and a few laughs, China National Driving Exam Questions = http://www.chinese-driving-test.com
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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR
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