2025 China Cycle – Manufacturing Bicycles and E-bikes in China
The 2025 China Cycle event or formally known as the China International Bicycle Fair is now underway in Shanghai from May 5-8. There is much discussion amongst suppliers this year about the United States trade war against China and how it has already negatively impacted bike industry manufacturers and brands reliant upon the American market. This issue was explored in our previous post: How the U.S. Reciprocal Tariffs will Damage Global Bicycle, E-bike, and Motorcycle Supply Chain. Regardless of how the situation plays out with the U.S., China will continue to dominate as a major supplier for bikes and components for the rest of the world.
Global reliance on Chinese bike manufacturing
Besides the European Union market that has effectively banned Chinese bikes for 32 years and the prized U.S. market that Chinese manufacturers had always relied upon until the recent trade war, many other bike markets in the world are highly dependent upon China for its supply of bicycles and e-bikes. These include Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the African continent, the South American continent, Mexico, and Russia. Even the United Kingdom, which had retained its pre-existing trade policies when it left the EU in 2020, recently decided in February 2025 to revoke its anti-dumping and countervailing measures on imports of Chinese non-folding e-bikes, which it estimates to be 95 percent of the UK market. The UK government found that by allowing imports of Chinese e-bikes could save consumers about 200 GBP each as a result of having cheaper e-bikes available as a purchasing option.
The recent drive to establish new bike manufacturing supply chain in Vietnam in anticipation of favorable trade deals with the U.S. and EU is another example where initial reliance on Chinese manufacturing will be inevitable. The Vietnamese policies on rules of origin will be tested when shipments of Chinese components, half-finished goods, tooling, machinery start flooding the country. Even the bike manufacturing countries within the EU are heavily dependent upon China for procurement of frames and components needed for their own production despite the anti-dumping duties on complete bicycles and e-bikes in place to protect the EU manufacturers.
Regional bike manufacturing capabilities in China
The bike manufacturing landscape in China is typically divided into three regions – north, central, and south. Each of these mainly coastal regions contain hundreds of supply chain manufacturers for materials and processes required for complete bikes and components.
1) The northern region of Hebei and Shandong Provinces that surrounds Tianjin are known for its assembly manufacturers of massive scale, specializing in large order volumes of price point bicycles, e-bikes, and scooters. The supply chain in this region had grown substantially in the past decade, fueled by low-cost labor and local government incentives compared to the other manufacturing regions in China, yet it still lacks the well-established production processes available in other regions and as a result, needs to transport in a large percentage of the components and materials needed for its production.
2) In the southern region of Guangdong Province between the industrial municipalities of Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Huizhou is a substantial supply chain for bike production that has existed for nearly 35 years. This region benefits from having every type of manufacturing process required for the complete production of bikes and components largely because the region is also a hub for hundreds of different industries.
3) The central region of Jiangsu Province at Kunshan and Zhejiang Province at Jinhua are two major hubs of bike manufacturing. The supply chain manufacturers in the Kunshan area are predominately foreign investments led by Taiwanese companies like Giant, that had set up its own operations in 1992 for assembly manufacturing, frame production, aluminum alloy material fabrication. The Jinhua area is populated by many domestic Chinese manufacturers specializing in e-bikes. Most of the electrical drivetrain production and supply chain is centered around this region since the 2003 establishment of Bafang in Suzhou.
There are of course some outliers. The Xiamen region in Fujian Province is well known for its robust carbon fiber bike frame and components manufacturing hub. The Shaanxi Province in the landlocked Midwest region is known for its titanium output and naturally there are multiple titanium frame and component manufacturers located there. The Sichuan Province is known for its motorcycle and automobile industries and have recently saw some bike industry manufacturers opt to move their production there to take advantage of the huge population pool of labor, local government incentives, and improved infrastructure transportation networks.
What are the advantages of sourcing bikes and parts from China?
There are many technical advantages for sourcing bicycles and e-bikes from China. After all, China does produce a majority of bicycles and e-bikes in the world. The combined capabilities and experience offered by manufacturers in China are a considerable asset that offers businesses a competitive advantage when the right conditions are met.
1) Supply chain integration.
True for any manufacturing industry and especially for consumer products, the supply chain ecosystem in China is perhaps the most large-scale and established in the world. For bike manufacturing industry, the emergence and popularity of electric bikes pushed China to the forefront ahead of Taiwan and Europe. Today, every single component and source material required for producing bikes can be sourced in China. There are manufacturers small and large specializing in each aspect of the supply chain. Even Taiwan and the EU as a whole does not come close, especially because of raw material constraints and sheer production capacity.
2) Experience.
Although bicycle manufacturing had existed since before China joined the WTO, the real experience and technical know-how obtained by the current Chinese bike manufacturing industry was drawn from Taiwanese bike and bike component manufacturers that had set up their own factories in China during the early 1990s. The early local hires at these Taiwanese-owned factories are now the upper and mid-level management at many of the domestic Chinese factories. For every Taiwanese-owned manufacturing specializing in complete bikes, bike components, tooling and molds, machinery, and metal fabrication – there are now dozens of Chinese manufacturers that produce the same products. Over 30 years of experience has allowed the industry in China to surpass the production volumes and technical capabilities of Taiwan and other emerging bike manufacturing countries.
3) Production efficiency.
Production efficiency is referring to the speed at which product can be realized and then manufactured. China benefits from having the experience and integrated supply chains that allow it to outperform its competitors. This is perhaps most evident when examining how much faster it is to prototype samples, open new tooling for frames and various parts, consolidation of component lead times, and the available capacity to schedule in new production.
4) Infrastructure.
China surpasses almost all industrialized countries in terms of infrastructural scale, and this has allowed its manufacturing industries to thrive. Infrastructure is simply referring to the roads, bridges, highways, railways, bridges, ports, airports, water supply, sewage, power grids, telecommunications, environmental safety, and public security that is made available for business and manufacturing to function. In each of the manufacturing regions for bike production, the Chinese state and provincial governments have provided the necessary foundation for allowing supply chains to succeed, and this has in turn attracted a steady pool of labor to these regions.
5) Cost efficiency.
The cost factor is always mentioned when analyzing Chinese manufacturing. For bikes and bike components, the cost efficiency factor is still evident because labor and overhead costs are still relatively low. When combining its integrated supply chain, manufacturing experience, production efficiency, and infrastructural superiority – the cost factor in China provides an advantage even against emerging competitors like Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, and Indonesia.
What are the disadvantages of sourcing bikes and parts from China?
Based on our collective experience from working in China and with Chinese manufacturers over the years, there are certainly some disadvantages of sourcing bicycles and e-bikes from China. Anecdotally, there are clearly more advantages than disadvantages, but some of these cons are a deal breaker for many.
1) Quality.
Any manufacturer in any country can have quality issues. For China, manufacturing quality has always faced significant criticism throughout the years because of the amount of production that is handled for a wide range of industries, which is basically grouping millions of factories together. Like in all countries, there are good quality manufacturers and there are poor quality manufacturers in China. The poor-quality manufacturers that exist within the bike manufacturing industry are prone to producing substandard products due to inconsistent internal quality control measures, lack of internal training for its work force, intentional negligence in following required production processes, and use of inferior production materials.
2) Due diligence.
The way some Chinese manufacturers are formed and structured inherently produces a transparency issue because information is not readily available to determine a company’s operating capital, financial status, compliance, and ownership. In terms of factory certifications, we have found that even if an ISO certificate is awarded, the factory does not necessarily function the way a certified manufacturer should. This is an industry-wide issue that is often overlooked and as a result only large companies looking to work with a Chinese manufacturer will conduct its own internal or third-party auditing to determine if safety standards, quality expectations, manufacturing processes, and due diligence is compliant.
3) Intellectual property.
While Chinese patent law is designed to protect intellectual property rights in general and does not allow outright theft, there are several factors contributing IP issues when businesses decide whether to produce their bikes and components in China. The existence of Chinese patent law and ability to register invention patents, utility model patents, and design patents allows bad actors, usually the contract manufacturers themselves, to infringe upon IP rights or directly hijack IP by filing so-called submarine patents to own the invention, utility, or design from within China. In terms of bicycles and e-bikes, we have seen some unscrupulous manufacturers routinely utilize these tactics to block competition or restrict its clients from moving their production to another manufacturer.
4) Global supply chain integration.
Although the supply chain is well integrated domestically in China, in some cases where materials and components are required from overseas, capital outflow restrictions by the Chinese government causes difficulties in foreign procurement. Additionally, complex import procedures and high import duties are another hurdle. In the case of bicycles and e-bikes, production in China typically relies less on foreign-made components to avoid these global supply chain integration issues and as a result the price point of bike products are typically much lower compared to bikes produced in neighboring countries. OEM component manufacturers are also hesitant to establish a presence in China because of importation difficulties, as well as restrictions on profit repatriation and capital outflows from China. This is why most OEM manufacturers will tend to invest in manufacturing and logistics facilities in Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong instead of China.
5) Competitiveness.
We had mentioned cost efficiency as an advantage of sourcing bikes from China, but at the same time the competitive advantage that China has offered is slowly disintegrating due to many factors. Demographically, China’s labor pool is rapidly declining, and the younger population is disinterested in manufacturing. This will likely drive labor costs higher in the near future and when compared to low-cost labor in emerging economies bordering China, this becomes an existential problem for Chinese manufacturers and their clients. Today, more and more Chinese-owned bike industry manufacturers are either moving their existing operations or setting up new factories in Vietnam in anticipation of the favorable trade deals with the U.S. and EU. This trend, along with the pre-existing anti-dumping duties imposed by the EU on complete bicycles and e-bikes from China and the recent U.S. instigated trade war restricting bikes and components from China will hamper the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturers in the long run and inevitably drive up costs for businesses.
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