Asianometry doesn't just recount the rise and fall of China's bike-share bubble; they expose the absurdity of a market that burned billions to park millions of bicycles in literal graveyards. The piece stands out by tracing the lineage of the concept from 1960s Dutch anarchist provocations to the high-stakes, dockless war between OFO and Mobike, revealing how a solution to traffic congestion became a lesson in unsustainable growth.
From Anarchist Provocation to State-Sponsored Experiment
The author begins by grounding the modern chaos in a surprising historical context, noting that "Chinese state media hailed it as one of China's four great inventions of modern times," only for the reality to become "the graveyards or the thousands of bikes left on streets." This framing is effective because it immediately juxtaposes national pride with the visual of urban decay. Asianometry explains that the concept originated with the "White Bicycle Plan" in Amsterdam, a social experiment by the Provo movement who viewed cars as "steel boxes of poisoned gas" and bicycles as "minimalist, vulnerable, green, and countercultural." The narrative cleverly highlights the failure of this first generation—where the first white bike was "immediately impounded by the police for not having a lock"—to set the stage for why later iterations struggled with theft and maintenance.
The commentary then shifts to the third generation of systems, which introduced docks and smart cards, before arriving at the specific failure of the 2008 Beijing Olympics program. Asianometry writes, "The rental partner companies did not cooperate. So cyclists can only rent and return at a company's dock and this effectively doubled the distances between docks." This detail is crucial; it illustrates that the technology wasn't the only barrier, but rather the fragmented logistics and high costs that made the system unviable for the average citizen. The author notes that a daily rental cost was "20 per day" when a bus ticket was just "one RMB," a disparity that doomed the initiative before the Olympics even ended.
The OFO Epiphany: From Campus Pool to National Mania
The piece excels in its biographical deep dive into the founders, particularly Dai Wei of OFO. Asianometry describes his background as a finance student who volunteered in western China, where a 50-minute bus commute convinced him that "biking was the best way to get to know the world." The author details the company's pivot from a failed "bike health service" to a shared pool model born from a strategy class discussion on theft. The original idea was a literal sharing of personal bikes: "100 people pulling together their bikes for shared use. The idea being that even if the thieves stole 50 of the bikes out of the pool, the remaining would still be enough for everyone to use."
This section is compelling because it humanizes the corporate explosion. Asianometry notes that the founders realized the flaws of the user-supplied model—users couldn't find bikes, and the lack of branding hurt promotion—leading to the "moment of brilliance" where they created an app to scan QR codes. The result was explosive: "By December, 20,000 daily rides and 100,000 users." The author captures the manic energy of the era, quoting a co-founder who recalled the launch day: "We were extremely tired but kept looking closely at our backend numbers throughout the day. We had 500 registered users and 200 rides... That was the first time we felt like we created a product with its own vitality, one that can grow."
Mobike and the Uber Playbook
The narrative then introduces the second major player, Mobike, founded by Hu Weiwei. Asianometry paints a vivid picture of her journey from a journalist to a tech entrepreneur who "took out a personal loan to keep it afloat" when things got dodgy. The author highlights the strategic divergence between the two giants: while OFO stuck to campuses initially, Mobike aimed for the city streets with a "sturdy chainless bike with solid tires" designed to last four years. The cost of this durability was high—"about $300 to $450 each"—compared to OFO's cheaper, less durable units.
The entry of Davis Wong as Mobike's CEO marks the shift from startup to war machine. Asianometry writes that Wong, a former Uber executive, "ran the Uber playbook, planning a lightning expansion across mainland China's biggest cities in attempt to build an unassailable network." This comparison to the ride-share wars provides essential context for the aggressive, capital-intensive strategy that followed. The author notes the skepticism surrounding the model, quoting Hu Weiwei's prediction that "in a few months you will see millions even tens of millions of rides per day. At that point those rides will just become data." This quote underscores the dehumanizing scale of the expansion, where individual user experience was sacrificed for network density.
The bikes themselves were cheap. Each cost about 2,700 RMB or $30 USD... They charged about 0.5 to 1 RMB per ride... so about 8 to 15 cents.
Critics might note that the author focuses heavily on the operational brilliance of the founders while underplaying the role of venture capital pressure in forcing this unsustainable expansion. The narrative suggests the founders had full agency, but the sheer speed of the "burn" implies external market forces were driving the recklessness just as much as internal ambition.
Bottom Line
Asianometry's strongest asset is the granular detail of the unit economics and the human stories behind the yellow and orange fleets, making the eventual collapse feel inevitable rather than accidental. The piece's biggest vulnerability is its focus on the 2017-2018 bubble without fully exploring the long-term regulatory aftermath or how these failures shaped China's current approach to gig-economy logistics. Readers should watch for how these lessons are being applied to the next wave of shared mobility, where the cost of failure is no longer just wasted metal, but systemic trust. "