The Bicycle Kingdom Goes Global

China’s Bike-sharing Companies Are Changing the World

- Charlie Campbell

IN 1987, MY FATHER, A DOCTOR, ATtended a medical conference in communist China. He returned from Beijing with tales of a sea of bicycles upon which millions of workers in identical inky blue tunics pedaled to farms and factories. By the time I’d moved to Beijing, almost three decades later, China’s process of reform and opening had hauled 600 million people out of poverty, and turned the world’s most populous nation into its No. 2 economy. Pedal power had been supplanted by chuntering motorbikes and the polished chrome of sleek sedans and SUVs. According to Beijing’s transportation commission, bicycles accounted for 63% of all journeys in the 1980s but only 17.8% by 2014.

Lately, something remarkable has happened: the self-styled “Bicycle Kingdom” has risen from the scrap heap. China has been infected by a bike-sharing fever where brightly colored common-usage bikes are located and rented via smartphone apps. About 60 firms have put as many as 18 million bicycles onto China’s streets. In Beijing alone there are more than 40 times as many registered shared bike users as those who use New York City’s Citi Bike, America’s largest bikesharing firm. The bikes are ridden for a time and then parked at the roadside for the next customer. No bike stands. No set docking stations. In China’s central city of Chengdu, more people ride shareable bikes than use the subway. “For me, shareable bikes are not only a way of commuting but also a form of entertainment,” says student Cao Yueqi, 22. “I like to ride them to get close to nature, or tour the different architecture styles of Beijing.”