China exports its bike-sharing revolution to the U.S. and the world

中国向美国和世界各地输出革命：共享单车革命

A rider cycles an Ofo bike past other dockless bikes in Beijing. Immensely popular in their homeland, China’s bike-sharing companies are now racing to expand abroad. (Shirley Feng/The Washington Post)

By Simon Denyer, August 31 at 5:32 PM

记者：西蒙•丹尼尔，8月31日下午5:32

BEIJING — To rent a bike in China, all it takes is a phone app, and any of the millions of bicycles scattered on sidewalks everywhere can be yours. No bike stand. No drop-off point. You scan a code, you ride, you leave and lock the bike wherever and whenever you’re done.

北京 — 在中国租一辆自行车，你只需要一个手机APP，然后到处散布在路边的成千上万辆自行车，就由你挑了。没有车桩。没有寄存点。你扫码，你骑走，你下车，你锁车，无论何时何地，一切由你随意。

China’s billion-dollar bike-sharing revolution has already transformed the look and feel of cities around the country, with more than 100 million apps downloaded and billions of rides taken on many millions of bikes.

中国这场数十亿美元的共享单车革命让这个国家的许多城市的面貌为之改观，APP被下载超过一亿次，数百万辆自行车已有了数十亿次的骑行。

Now it is going global.

现在，共享单车开始走向全球。

Last month, a Chinese company called Ofo made its first foray into the United States, delivering 1,000 bicycles to the streets of Seattle, with plans to expand nationally. From Italy to Kazakhstan, from Britain to Japan, from Singapore — Asia’s greenest city — to one of its most congested, Bangkok, Ofo and its main Chinese rival Mobike are on a breakneck race to expand across the globe.

上个月，中国公司ofo首次进军美国，在西雅图街头投放了1000辆自行车，并计划遍及全美。从意大利到哈萨克斯坦，从英国到日本，从亚洲最绿色的城市新加坡到亚洲最拥堵的城市之一曼谷，ofo和其主要中国竞争对手摩拜正在全球跑马圈地，展开一场殊死较量。

Welcomed in many cities, but not by everyone, the companies are already encountering a backlash. Opponents have branded Ofo and Mobike a menace, a plague and a public nuisance.

许多反对者将ofo和摩拜称为危害、瘟疫、公害。

Each of the two main Chinese companies has more than 7 million bikes in operation in over 150 cities, mostly in China, and each recently attracted $600 million to $700 million in new funding to finance their global expansions.

两家公司每家近期都吸引到了6-7亿美元的新融资，用于全球扩张。

Bikes are typically fitted with GPS locators to enable users to find them via the app. Payment is minimal and made electronically.

Beijing, a city where bikes once ruled, has once again taken to two wheels, and most cyclists seem to use a shared bike these days. Greener and healthier to use, the bikes get commuters to and from public transit stations and discourage car use. They solve what planners call the “first-mile-last-mile problem,” helping people get from their homes to a bus stop, for example, or from a subway station to their final destination.

Dubbed “Uber for bikes,” they have proved much more popular than schemes based on docking stations. New York’s Citi Bike, with 10,000 bikes and 236,000 subscribers, is the largest operation in the United States. Compare that with Beijing, which has 700,000 shared bikes and 11 million registered users, nearly half the capital’s population. (Washington’s Capital Bikeshare program offers 3,700 bikes.)

共享单车被戏称为“自行车优步”，要比有桩自行车受欢迎得多。纽约的“Citi Bike”项目是全美最大的项目，拥有10,000辆车和236,000名用户。但仅与北京一地相比，它就完全是小巫见大巫了。北京拥有700,000辆共享单车，1100万名用户，几乎是这个城市人口的一半（华盛顿的Capital Bikeshare项目有3,700辆单车）。

Unlike arrangements based on docking stations in Washington and London, the dockless model doesn’t require government subsidies and is already spawning rival start-ups: California’s Spin and LimeBike narrowly beat Ofo to the punch in Seattle after the city pulled the plug on its subsidized bike-sharing program.

与华盛顿与伦敦的有桩模式不同，无桩模式无需政府补贴，并已在催生新兴竞争对手：在西雅图叫停其补贴有桩共享单车项目后，加州的Spin和LimeBike项目捷足先登投放市场，仅比ofo早了一点点。

Ofo is now advertising on its LinkedIn page for a country head based in the greater New York area, while Mobike is advertising for jobs in Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

Ofo正在其LinkedIn页面上广告招聘驻大纽约地区的全美负责人。而摩拜也在达拉斯/福特沃斯、芝加哥、旧金山和纽约广告招人。

The explosion in users speaks to their success. But they are not universally liked.

In China, bikes clog sidewalks and pile up in unruly flocks outside subway stations, shopping malls, office buildings and road intersections. Unwanted or broken bikes are dumped by highways, in rivers and parks, on construction sites or under bridges.

Shanghai-based blogger Marc Milián calls them a “plague,” while locals have taken to social media to lambaste the “anarchic experiment” that is creating “a new generation of trash.”

Shanghai’s government has seized thousands of illegally parked bikes. It recently called for a halt on companies putting more bikes onto the streets and asked them to work faster to remove badly parked bikes.

Yet, in a country where the government puts a premium on controlling its citizens, Chinese officials have displayed a remarkably light touch with this booming new business. In guidelines issued last month, the State Council welcomed shared bikes as part of “the green urban transport system,” while urging local governments “to ensure rational allocation of bicycles and avoid excess supply in some areas.”

Unlike Uber, bike-share companies haven’t angered vested interests such as taxi drivers, but they may run into much stiffer opposition from regulators and citizen groups in the West.

与优步不同，共享单车公司并未惹恼出租司机等既得利益者，但它们却可能遭遇来自西方国家监管机构和市民团体更为激烈的反对。

In San Francisco, China’s Bluegogo dumped 20,000 bikes onto the streets in January without permission. City Supervisor Aaron Peskin called them a “public nuisance” and threatened legal action against an “arrogant” tech company.

今年1月，中国公司Bluegogo未经允许即在旧金山街头投放了20,000辆单车。城市监管人艾伦•佩斯金称它们为“公害”，并威胁要起诉这家“傲慢无礼”的科技公司。

Writing in the San Francisco Examiner, Darcy Brown of the citizens group San Francisco Beautiful called Bluegogo a “rogue” company that was “bringing chaos to our public spaces” and posing a “threat to the beauty and livability of our city.” Bluegogo said the company has since pulled its bikes from San Francisco.

市民团体“美丽旧金山”的达西•布朗在旧金山观察家报上撰文称Bluegogo为“流氓”公司，将“给我们的公共空间带来混乱”，“对这个城市的美丽和宜居性带来威胁”。Bluegogo随后称公司已将其单车撤出旧金山。

In Singapore, the arrival of 30,000 bikes met with mixed reactions, with some people reportedly calling them a “menace.”

在新加坡，人们对30,000辆共享单车的到来反响不一，据称有人称它们为“滋扰”。

In a sense, bike-sharing schemes are tests of the societies in which they are launched and whether communities can look after public goods.

In China, vandalism and theft have been a problem, and it is easy to spot bikes with broken locks, wheels removed or smart codes scratched off.

But that appears to have been trumped by people’s enthusiasm for all things digital, for e-commerce and anything that arrives through their smartphones — what Peking University professor Jeffrey Towson calls “their hyper-adoption of anything mobile, plus the almost uniform adoption of mobile payments in China.”

In Britain, vandalism initially blighted Mobike’s June launch in Manchester: Police reportedly recorded 20 incidents in just the first 10 days, with bikes thrown in a canal, and a video catching a youth throwing rocks in an attempt to destroy one of the supposedly vandal-proof bikes.

6月份，摩拜在英国曼切斯特的投放一开始就遭遇了破坏公物行为之害：据报道，在头10天内，警方就记录了20起，有人将自行车扔进运河，有视频显示一个青年用石头砸车，试图破坏据称可防破坏的单车。

“That’s why we can’t have nice things,” one Mancunian commented on Twitter. “This is a real shame. I love those bikes — someone always wants to ruin stuff!” another commented.

一位曼切斯特人在推特上写道：“这就是我们不能有好东西的原因了。”另一个人则写道：“这真是耻辱。我喜欢这些自行车，可总有人要搞破坏。”

Yet many more Mancunians enthusiastically embraced their “new toy,” said Chris Martin, ­Mobike’s vice president in charge of international expansion. There were even reports of people cleaning the bikes or jumping in the canal to fish them out.

但摩拜负责国际业务拓展的副总裁克里斯•马丁说，更多曼切斯特人真心热烈欢迎他们的“新玩具”。甚至有报道称有人自行清洁车辆或跳进运河中捞出单车。

The company has ruled out the approach taken by Bluegogo or Uber, and instead works closely with local governments before launching — giving them control over how many bikes should be supplied and time to issue parking guidelines.

摩拜摒弃了Bluegogo或优步的做法，而是在投放前与当地政府密切合作，让地方政府控制可以供应多少车辆，让政府有时间发布停车规则。

“The Uber model is to ignore local government, subvert it, grow larger than can be controlled, and then afterwards ask for forgiveness and permission,” Martin said. “We very specifically chose to do the opposite.”

马丁说：“优步的模式是无视地方政府，颠覆政府权威，等自己壮大到政府无法控制的时候再寻求原谅和准许。我们则特意地反其道而行之。”

The companies hope to encourage better behavior by awarding users credits for reporting broken or illegally parked bikes — and demerits for correspondingly bad behavior. If your score drops too low, your next ride could become much more expensive.

Ofo began as a student project at Peking University; its 26-year-old founder, Dai Wei, now runs a company valued at $3 billion. No surprise that among Ofo’s first forays into Britain have been the university cities of Cambridge and Oxford.

Ofo以在北京大学的一个学生项目起家。因此，毫不奇怪，ofo首次进军英国选择的投放城市就包括剑桥和牛津这样的大学城。

The economics remain fuzzy, experts say: In China, short rides are free, and many users say they pay virtually nothing. But even with the cost of maintaining and replacing broken bikes, Dai says, Ofo should break even by year’s end.

Towson sees potential for raising revenue with advertisements on bikes, as well as a move to paid subscriptions. He’s also optimistic about the move abroad.

北京大学教授杰弗里•陶森认为可以通过车身广告和付费骑行提高收入。他对走向海外的行动也表示乐观。

“What I love about these companies is the way they have exposed how inconvenient owning and/or renting bicycles has always been,” he wrote on his website. “Try convincing someone to buy a bicycle and store it in their apartment in Shanghai now.”

In Seattle, there are now 3,000 dollar-a-ride dockless bikes on the streets, and usage has crushed the old docking-station-based project, says Tom Fucoloro, editor of the Seattle Bike Blog. Nor have fears of chaos been realized.

西雅图自行车博客编辑汤姆•福克罗洛说，现在在西雅图，街面上有3,000辆一美元一次的共享单车，其使用次数已完胜原有的有桩项目。而且所担心的混乱也没有出现。

“Everyone’s scared to death of these piles of bikes. I find that kind of funny — too many bicycles would be an amazing problem for a U.S. city to have,” he said.

“Almost all the bikes are parked out of the way, more or less properly, and if they aren’t, someone will just come and move them out of the way. Seattle’s kind of a rule-following town in that way and that’s playing out with the bikes.”

他说：“几乎所有的自行车差不多都像样地停放着，没有挡道，即使有个别的，也总有人过来把它挪开。西雅图就是这样一个遵守规则的城市，这同样体现在自行车上。”

Shirley Feng contributed to this report.