Mainland's long history of pedal power

China was among the first countries to learn of the bicycle designed by a Frenchman named Michaux in the 1860s, after an official delegation visited Paris in 1866 and reported the new contraption to the emperor.

A Shanghai newspaper reported the first bicycle in China in November 1868, and a city guidebook published in 1876 describes foreigners cycling through the streets, an exotic sight for locals.

For the next two decades, bicycle use was restricted to foreigners because the small class of wealthy Chinese who could afford a bicycle would not countenance the disgrace of being seen pedalling in public and running the risk of falling over. They preferred to be carried by sedan or, after 1874, by rickshaw.

This changed in the 1890s with the arrival of Chinese students, businesspeople and journalists who returned from abroad, bringing their bicycles with them.

The democratisation of the bicycle began in the 1920s. In 1925, with 2 million people, Shanghai had 9,800 bicycles, rising to 20,000 in 1930. The early 1930s saw the birth of China's bicycle industry, with combined annual output of 10,000 by 1945. When the communists took power in 1949, the country had 500,000 bicycles.

The new government eagerly embraced the bicycle, as an economic and equal means of transport, and gave the industry preferential treatment.