Webwatch: China's love affair with the car continues

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Interesting news article posted on the net yesterday (source: Reuters) :

BEIJING • A ban on battery-powered bicycles in the southern China city of Guangzhou has left tens of thousands of owners grounded without compensation and angered vendors who face lost business, local media reported yesterday.
The ban, effective a day after police announced it last week but allowing a "15-day education period", was aimed at preventing electric-powered bikes from becoming "the main mode of transport", Xinhua reported.
"If such bikes are permitted, this will certainly rapidly increase the burden on roads," Xinhua quoted police as saying.
Guangzhou, a booming Pearl River Delta city of about 10 million often choked with traffic jams, was China's fifth-fastest growing car market in the first half of 2006, state media has reported

Original article here

As they state, just as we are trying to solve our own traffic problems, they are rapidly following down the same path - crazy!

 

[flecc]

And this isn't the first time it's happened there. Not certain where, but I think it was Shanghai's mayor who condemned bicycles a year or so ago for causing traffic jams and put in place restrictions banning them from many main roads in the city. With their universality there, it was electric bikes that suffered. India has also started similar restrictions in some places.

As you say, crazy, but if there's one thing that my long life has taught me, it's that during any form of growth, people will not learn from others but insist on repeating the mistakes for themselves. China and all other developing nations will undoubtedly have to go through all the agonies we've been through, at great cost to themselves and the rest of us. We can only hope there's a world left for people to live in afterwards.

 

[urstuart16v@talktalk.net]

could not agree more Flecc we all seem to be on some sort of a green trip at the moment ,but if we cut our pollution to zero in this country it would make no difference at all ,because China and India are battling to become the next superpowers ,and will not take any notice of the rest of the world until it is to late, a bit like pollution in Russia and its satellites a few years ago.But in some respects we only have ourselves to blame as we are the ones buying their cheap goods including electric bikes,and at the same time destroying jobs for are own peaple,but who are we to deny the western world standard of living to these people-regards Stuart

 

[flecc]

Good points Stuart, as you say, who are we to say they can't have what we've had, and I think our politicians reluctantly realise that too. They don't seem minded to include nuclear weapons in that though!

 

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Another interesting titbit for you: China Bicycle Association estimates there are an astounding 800 companies manufacturing electric bikes in China alone. Quite incredible!

In fact, the whole article is a great read although quite long and over a year old but is still relevant. Click here to read it.

 

[flecc]

Amazing! My favourite Chinese bicycle statistic is the output of it's largest manufacturer, Giant, 100 million bikes a year.

In the days when Britain was tops, our largest, Raleigh Industries, produced 100 thousand bikes a year, one for every thousand Giant makes now.

From that, it might be thought that Raleigh were not very effective at exploiting the market, but the sadder and more sinister truth is that the Raleigh, and other British bikes, would perform for 30 or 40 years at least, as I know from the ancient bikes I used to work on. Most of that Chinese production will only be around for a fraction of that time before being consigned to tips. The combination of often poorer quality and our throwaway consumer society is responsible for this of course.

In the past, bikes would be handed down across the generations, but now almost every kid and adult wants the latest every time. We're a profligate lot.

 

[flecc]

India's acceptance of the internet has been truly astonishing as you say. My sister who lived in a remote and very poor district was astonished one day when I'd mailed her referring to some bang up to date information of her immediate area. What she hadn't known was that the tiny settlement of huts with no running water and no permanent electricity that she walked just over a mile to each day to collect well water, had a permanent web site kept right up to date.

 

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It does indeed look like India is being treated seriously by the big players, Trek is expanding there, see here for details