Signs of China Speed

It seems that there are two ways of starting an article about China; either by concentrating on the long history or talking about China speed. This year´s FBCS Member Directory update seems to combine both.

Everyone is already aware of how shared biking took China by storm in 2016/2017. The Chinese shared bike market went, in less than a year, from practically nothing to providing more trips than all on-demand transport in North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and India – combined! ofo, one of the main players in Chinese bike-sharing, has provided over 2 billion bike rides in 2 years – it took Uber six years. Monetarily there is still a large gap. Uber is worth some 50+ billion USD now and another on-demand car ride provider, Lyft, is valued at 7.5 billion USD.  Wei Dai, one of the three founders of ofo said in April 2017 that the company was worth “over 2 billion USD”. 

These figures are all old news to those of us, who live in China. It is easy to feel bike-sharing is already passé and look for the next big thing. However, in reality this change, where Shanghai citizens from workers in hard hats to bankers in shiny brogues, transferred from buses and cars to bikes happened really “just yesterday”. When I visited members April-May 2016, it was by subway or by taxi. This year I have been able to bike almost everywhere, or combine subway with a bicycle.

It was inconceivable for the rich to bike in 2016, but by 2017 one is hopelessly old-fashioned without at least two bike APPs on their phone. This is the beauty of Shanghai – last year writing this I could not have written about bike sharing, or about low cost e-car sharing, because it did not exist. Staying on top of what is going on in China requires one to be vigilant – so please do follow up what is happening at FBCS!