China asks: what is an e-bike?

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Like camels in ancient Hatra or ferries on the Thames in Tudor London, electric bikes are etched on to the soul of 21st-century China. Each day, tens of millions of them cluster at the intersections of the biggest cities, waiting for the lights to turn green. Yet the country seems to be having significant difficulty regulating, and even defining, these vehicles.

When you buy an e-bike in China you must register it with the police. To comply with registration it must have pedals attached and is restricted to travelling at a 25km per hour speed limit. After registration is complete, however, the pedals, which look out of place on what is essentially a moped, are invariably removed. As for speed, that can be easily adjusted.

In Shanghai, e-bikes are the quickest way to get around. Given their access to special bike lanes, part of a relatively recent urban landscape, a journey that would take around half an hour by car can be completed in a third of that time. You do not need to pass a test to get a licence for one either.

In reality, many travel much faster than 25km/h. But for recent models, no matter the speed, the screen will not display a number higher.

E-bikes are by now so widespread that, if their speed were actually restricted to the official limit, the economic impact would be severe. This captures a wider principle of policymaking in China. Although the sheer weight of state bureaucracy may give the impression of rigid decision-making, the reality on the ground is governed by an often boundless flexibility.

The expression “to point at a deer and call it a horse”, or “to misrepresent”, originally referred to a test of loyalty a prime minister imposed on officials in ancient China. It has a certain newfound relevance when it comes to e-bikes, which have evolved much more quickly.

Fast, heavy motorbikes were largely restricted from the downtown of major Chinese cities in the early 2000s. In the face of this limitation, the country’s manufacturing sector appears to have produced e-bikes that have some similarities to motorbikes but are able to comply with the country’s regulatory framework for e-bikes.

This can cause confusion. On Xiaohongshu, a social media platform, a guide to the vehicles identifies bikes that look like most registered e-bikes as an “electronic light motorbike”. Ninebot, one of the biggest e-bike manufacturers, recently had a popular model banned for being too heavy.

Speed is harder to measure than weight. But there is no shortage of people to ask, even if they are at risk of driving away mid-conversation. At an intersection, one e-bike driver for delivery firm Meituan said he could reach 70 or 80km/h. He could do his job at 50km/h, he said. Could you do your job at 25, I asked. He shook his head, and then he was off.

“If everyone followed the rules, it would be too slow,” explained one person I met while charging my bike (the cost, at around Rmb1.5 a time, is negligible).

Confusingly, the streets of Shanghai are full of traffic police who meticulously apply other rules, such as the wearing of helmets. Fines for the failure to do so, at just Rmb30, reflect the earnings of the largely blue collar and migrant user base of e-bikes. In many cities, tensions with those who drive cars appear to be rising; the vehicles have quietly become a modern marker of social class in China.

I asked one police officer if he had ever fined anyone for breaching the 25km/h speed limit on the bikes. Not once in fifteen years, he replied. It would only happen if there were an accident. The law was very difficult to implement, he added, echoing a wider consensus.

Last month, the government proposed regulatory revisions that could help enforce the speed limit. For now, display screens that cannot exceed 25km/h appear to be a kind of compromise within the manufacturing process. At another intersection, one driver explained, unlike others, his screen showed the real speed. His bike was from before 2019, when the latest regulations were brought in.

The lights changed, and, as we set off, his speed soon surpassed the critical threshold. As for the newer screens, they remain loyal to their own version of the truth.

Additional reporting by Wang Xueqiao and Wenjie Ding

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