

China has 400 million registered bike-sharing users and the daily number of riders peaked at 70 million, according to Liu Xiaoming, vice minister of the Ministry of Transport, Beijing Morning Post reported.
The industry has generated revenue of 221.3 billion yuan ($35 billion), provided 390,000 jobs, and contributed 10.1 billion yuan of growth to information consumption last year, according to a report on the social and economic influence of shared-bicycles.
Seventy-seven shared-bicycle companies have emerged in China over the last two-plus years, with a combined total of 23 million bikes in Chinese cities, towns, and even villages, Liu said at a press meeting on Wednesday.
Shared-bikes have driven the growth of related businesses, the report showed. The industry has reduced the use of gas by 1.41 million tons, one percent of the national gas consumption in a year.
The industry has also helped to relieve 400 million hours of time spent in traffic, equal to the work hours of 240,000 people a year.
Though the government has been supporting the development of shared-bicycles, the sector also needs to be regulated, according to the Ministry of Transport.
According to information released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) last year, some bike-sharing startups have been kicked out of the market or integrated with other services after fierce competitions.
In the second half of 2017, some of the services made headlines for the difficulty that caused their customers in reclaiming deposits, such as Kuqi Bike, suggesting that the sector needs to be better regulated.
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