In the 1970s, owning a bicycle, especially one of the best models such as a Flying Pigeon or Phoenix, was a family pride and a status symbol.
But these days, bike ownership is a rarity since most people hop on shared bikes that are easily available on the street. For the cycling enthusiasts who want to make the purchase, their go-to options are the premium road bikes whose price can go up to 10,000 U.S. dollars.
China's port city of Tianjin, located to the southeast of central Beijing, is China's largest bicycle manufacturing hub. In 2017, Tianjin produced 50.1 million bikes, accounting for 56 percent among all bikes produced in China, according to data from China's Bicycle Association.
Streets in China were packed with bicycles in the 1970s. /VCG Photo
Today, Tianjin is home to an integrated production system, with more than 1,000 bicycle factories and component suppliers. More than half the bikes produced in the city are targeted to foreign markets.
Yet Tianjin, just as China's bicycle manufacturing industry, is plagued by one central problem—it is stuck in the lower rungs of the global value chains.
Shi Shunkuan, vice general manager at Tangshan Jinhengtong Group, a bike component supplier to world-renowned brands like Giant, joined the industry in 1996, at a time when streets in cities across China were packed with bicycles.
Workers on the production line of Tangshan Jinhengtong Group. /CGTN Photo
"China's bike manufacturers have a low brand recognition problem—most of the exports are low-added products," Shi told CGTN. The town where his company locates in, Lutai Economic Development Zone of Hebei Province, to the northeast of Tianjin, is home to China's bike component supplier hub.
The decline in the number of bikes coincided with the doubling of private car ownership in China. Though initially regarded as a potentially stimulating force, the bike-sharing boom, which swept across China since 2017, turned out to be destructive to the industry.
"Before, China produced 2 million bikes on average per year for the domestic market; but the demand rose to 10 million per year overnight because of the shared bike boom, which completely destroyed order in the industry," Shi from Tangshan Jinhengtong Group told CGTN.
Bike wheels produced by Tangshan Jinhengtong Group. /CGTN Photo
Lured by the quick profit promised by bike-sharing companies, small and medium-scale bike manufacturers quickly opened up more production lines. It was reported that at its height, an Ofo bike rolled off the production line every 15 seconds.
But the boom quickly turned into a bust. Starting in late 2017, a slew of bike-sharing companies declared bankruptcy and were unable to pay the bill for the enormous amount of orders they placed on the bike factories. Those small and medium-sized factories which vastly increased production were left financially broke.
As the bike industry hit its rock bottom, China's electric scooter industry found its growth potential.
An electric scooter production line in Yadea's Tianjin factory. /CGTN Photo
As motorcycles are ruled out across cities, electric scooters are in high demand. Since 2006, the demand for electric scooters increased dramatically. At its most, the number of nation-wide newly added customers of electric bikes reached 30 million per year.
"It used to be the case that any company can be an electric scooter supplier, even small bicycle factory," said Zhang Xiaogang, general manager of Tianjin Yadea Technology Group C. Ltd, China's leading electric scooter supplier. "But now with higher demand from consumers for quality, and stricter enforcement of environmental and safety rules, the threshold for entering into the business is much higher."
Producing premium products and serving the higher-income market seems to be the direction that both China's bicycle industry and the electric scooter industry want to follow. Zhang's company, Yadea, recently became the first one in the industry to launch a graphene battery, which boasts of being able to be recharged 1,000 times before needing to be replaced.
A worker tests out Yadea's electric scooter in a testing area in the factory. /CGTN Photo
On the other hand, Shi Shunkuan's company started to produce carbon fiber bike frames in recent years, which are much lighter and are commonly seen in sports tournaments like Tour de France. The derived added-value from a carbon fiber bike is much higher, according to Shi.
Trends in the bicycle market have closely reflected the dramatic changes in the Chinese economy over the past three decades. Though having gone through dramatic ups and downs, Shi said he has full confidence in the industry's potential.
"As the issues of environmental protection and energy security get more attention, bikes will become mainstream again."