China's bike-hire industry creates 70,000 new jobs

Parked shared bikes on a street in Luoyang, Henan province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

NINGBO - China's bike-hire companies have 16 million bikes on streets and employ about 100,000 people, according to the State Information Center(SIC).

The SIC released a report on the bike-hire industry at an intelligent cities expo in Ningbo, Zhejiang province on Saturday.

According to the report, each day around 50 million rides are taken, so each bike is used around three times on average.

As of the end of June, there were 106 million shared bike users in China, accounting for 14.1 percent of all internet users.

The report said of the 100,000 jobs, 70,000 were newly created during H1, about one percent of new jobs in urban areas during the period.

There are about 70 app-based bike-hire companies in China.

With leading market players such as Mobike and ofo expanding, both domestically and abroad, authorities have been firm in regulating the industry.

A guideline released in August stipulated that users must register under their real names, and providers are banned from offering services to children under the age of 12. Governments were advised to improve bike lanes to ensure safety for riders.

Wuhan city announced last week that it would mark off or build about 2,500 km of bike lanes in downtown areas.