Chinese bike share graveyard a monument to industry's arrogance

Future of dockless bicycles under a cloud amid concerns there are too many bikes and not enough demand
By Benjamin Haas

Thousands of share bikes laid to rest in the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen.

At first glance the photos vaguely resemble a painting. 

On closer inspection it might be a giant sculpture or some other art project. 

But in reality it is a mangled pile of bicycles covering an area roughly the size of a football pitch, and so high that cranes are needed to reach the top; cast-offs from the boom and bust of China’s bike sharing industry.
Just two days after China’s number three bike sharing company went bankrupt, a photographer in the south-eastern city of Xiamen captured a bicycle graveyard where thousands have been laid to rest. The pile clearly contains thousands of bikes from each of the top three companies, Mobike, Ofo and the now-defunct Bluegogo.

Anger as Chinese bike sharing firm shuts up office with riders' deposits

Once hailed as “Uber for bikes”, China’s cycle hire startups allowed users to unlock GPS-enabled bikes with their smartphone, and drop them off anywhere without the need to park it at a dock.
Bluegogo’s bankruptcy last week sparked questions about the future of dockless bike sharing in China, amid concerns there are too many bikes and insufficient demand. 

In an open letter apologising for his missteps, Bluegogo’s chief executive said he had been “filled with arrogance”.

A share bicycle graveyard viewed from the air in Xiamen, south-east China. 

Customers are charged just pennies per 30 minute ride, but competing companies have flooded cities with bikes to ensure cycles are always available. 

The top two firms have each raised more than $1bn (£750m) in funding.
Shanghai currently has 1.5m shared bikes on the streets, and despite its population being three times greater than London, that number far outstrips the 11,000 Santander Cycles peppered throughout the UK capital.

A mechanic from bike share company Ofo stands amongst damaged bicycles needing repair in Beijing. 

The large number of cycles on Chinese streets have led to scenes of clogged sidewalks no longer fit for pedestrians and piles of mangled bikes that have been illegally parked.
But the scene in Xiamen appears to be one of the largest amalgamations of discarded bicycles, with trucks unloading bikes from around the city.

The Manchurian President

“I am Chinese”: Rodrigo Duterte explained the Philippines’ shift in the South China Sea to China’s CCTV

By Echo Huang Yinyin and sabella Steger
Homecoming. 

Rodrigo Duterte, Beijing’s new best friend, has swiftly pivoted away from the US and into China’s arms, and arrived in Beijing today for a high-profile visit where he’s promised to improve economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Since he was elected little over 100 days ago, Duterte has trashed the US and played up links between the Philippines and China, even repeatedly bringing up the fact that he has a Chinese grandfather who came from Xiamen.
In a 20-minute interview broadcast by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Oct. 18 (though it was recorded in Manila on Oct. 13), Duterte and host Shui Junyi discussed a range of issues, but the interview was dominated by the two countries’ territorial dispute in the South China Sea and Manila’s about-face over the dispute.
Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, challenged Beijing’s aggression in the South China Sea in an international tribunal and won, with a July 12 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague invalidating China’s sweeping maritime claims. 

It was a huge victory for the Philippines and supported by Western allies like the US and Australia, but Duterte seems uninterested in using the result to rally international pressure against China—despite once vowing to ride into the South China Sea on a jet ski while waving the Philippine flag.

“I am Chinese.”

In the CCTV interview, Duterte maintained that he wasn’t “breaking away” from the US, but that he was merely being “pragmatic” and wants to be “friends with everybody.” 

On the Hague tribunal he said, “if it costs a third world war, what might be the point of insisting on the ownership of the waters? It does not bring prosperity.”
Ahead of his visit, Duterte played down the dispute over fishing rights in the South China Sea with China, pledging instead to only discuss trade issues. 

Reuters reported Wednesday, however, that Beijing is considering granting conditional fishing rights to the Philippines in Scarborough Shoal, which China seized from the Southeast Asian country in 2012.
“Someday, the South China Sea will just be what, China Sea?… 100 years from now, [the South China Sea] might be meaningless… the ocean cannot feed…[the] human race,” Duterte told CCTV. “Your fish is my fish. We will talk, we will resolve, it is not the time to go to war.”
Shui asked how sincere his new diplomatic approach was, to which Duterte responded: “Maybe because I am Chinese and I believe in sincerity.” 

He added that one quarter of the Philippine population is of Chinese descent, and that at a recent business forum, “everybody [was] shouting” to accompany him to China.