on this episode of China uncensored
forget the stock market bubble this is
China's incredible bike-share bubble hi
welcome to China uncensored I'm your
host Chris Chappell
a good old bicycle that trustworthy
two-wheeled iron steed so whether you're
out for some fresh air and exercise
taking your kid to school or grabbing
some fast food at McDonald's bikes in
China like marriage go together like a
horse and carriage unfortunately thanks
to a bubble and doc free bike sharing
that relationship has turned toxic so on
today's episode of China uncensored
let's look at how China's bike sharing
program has become a complete disaster
one giant difference between China's
bike sharing and what you're used to in
the u.s. is docking for bike sharing in
say San Francisco or New York you have
to pick them up from a dock and return
them to a dock and you can unlock a bike
with a physical key or a mobile app the
benefits are that it's easy for the city
governments to keep them tidy in
designated places and it's easy for the
bike share companies to track them and
use vans to move bikes around to where
they're needed most but there's a last
mile problem that is there are only so
many docks and if there's no dock within
about a mile of where a person wants to
start or end their trip they're simply
not going to use the bike share sorry
everyone who lives in the Bronx
but in China cities have a cure for this
last mile problem dock less bikes thanks
to GPS chips in every bike you can just
unlock one using your mobile app and
when you're done leave it wherever you
want and I mean wherever you want
sometimes the Cure can be worse than the
disease this is a photo of the entrance
to a park in the city of Shenzhen where
as you can see people ride shared bikes
right up to the entrance and then just
throw them on top of the ginormous pile
of other bikes before going inside to
enjoy the scenery
China's dhoklas bike sharing industry
grew like mad in recent years thanks to
the brilliant combination of cutthroat
competition
and no government regulation there's now
about 500 or so competing doclist bike
sharing companies in China
each desperate to win market share by
filling cities with their bikes with the
idea being that if their bike is on top
of that pile people will choose their
brand over competitors with no limits to
the number of companies that could
operate in a given region or to the
number of bikes this led to unsightly
clutter and crippling choice anxiety
I think she's realized she's just better
off walking that last mile two of the
biggest bike sharing startups in China
are Oh fo and mo bike between them
they've got more than 120 million
registered users and more than 13
million bikes piling up in Chinese
cities and what made it all possible
is billions of dollars in venture
capital o fo with its trademark
canary-yellow bikes has raised at least
1.3 billion dollars in investment across
five rounds of funding and mo bike
recently got six hundred million in its
latest funding round bringing its market
cap to about 1 billion dollars and these
companies with 10 figure market
valuations are locked in a cash burning
race to dominate market share by pumping
out bikes as fast as possible keeping
the prices as low as possible and
stacking them in the streets as high as
possible to deal with this some cities
have started sending crews out to
impound shared bikes which makes sense
this cyclist has to ride in the street
with cars because the bike lane has
turned into a bike pile here's a series
of photos from a Shanghai bicycle
impound lot which thousands upon
thousands upon thousands of bikes now
call home fortunately there's still
space in Shanghai to plant huge fields
of colorful flowers no it's more bikes
and more bikes and more bikes and more
bikes but at least there's been some
pushback lately for example after
Shanghai realized it had 1.5 million
shared bikes that's one for every 16
residents it started to say enough is
enough on August 18th
the Shanghai Transportation Bureau
ordered bike-share companies to stop
adding more bikes to the streets there's
also a proposal in China to punish
people who park badly and misuse shared
bikes and if anyone is good at
monitoring and punishing its citizens
it's the Chinese government according to
the national interest their surveillance
technology can scan the entire
population in one second I know it might
feel like 1984 meets Terminator meets
premium rush but if it'll prevent people
from leaving heaps of shared bikes all
over the place it'll be totally worth it
or and I know this sounds crazy but hear
me out instead of punishing individual
citizens the government could step in to
design and implement thoughtful policies
to make sure the bike sharing companies
act responsibly
just kidding it's way easier to just
punish people so what do you think about
China's bike sharing disaster leave your
comments below and now it's time when I
answer a question from you one of my
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I've been wondering is have you ever
thought of going to being more serious
or do you think the satirical way of the
show is the way it should be good
question
so I started China uncensored back in
2012 before that I was covering China
but in a straight news kind of way and
I'm sorry to say I found nobody really
cared which bothered me because I knew
China is a really important country and
was having a big impact on our lives in
the United States this was also around
the time the Communist Party started
building those artificial islands in the
South China Sea and claiming that it
proved it was their territory I found I
can keep a straight face saying the
Chinese government has started to build
fake Islands and are claiming it as
ancient Chinese territory no that's
absolutely ridonculous
so I created China uncensored with the
tone it has because that's the only way
I felt I could really say what I wanted
to say about the Chinese Communist Party
and over the years I found using satire
has actually helped bring a larger
audience to China news and politics and
be honest if all I did was straight news
reporting and you still be watching
thanks for your question primo and if
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more thanks for watching this episode of
China uncensored once again I'm Chris
Chappell see you next time
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