Discussion keeps the world turning.
This Motorcycles in China were once considered to be nothing more than just cheap transportation.
Oh, times have changed.
They're now representing freedom and adventure and maybe a little bit of identity too.
So yes, times have changed, but what exactly has changed?
Today, we'll look at the industry as a whole, from the championship bikes to the new riders and the engineering behind the roar.
Welcome to China's motorcycle boom.
After that, there's a new short drama in the country that no one expected to succeed.
There aren't any famous actors, no fancy production.
It's just a small team and a great story.
But within days, it was everywhere online.
So what did Enemy get right that the big budget productions missed?
We're live from our studios here in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Hello there.
Thanks very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yuxin and Fei Fei.
First up.
From being seen as nothing more than cheap transportation to becoming symbols of freedom and adventure and even personal identity.
China's motorcycle story has taken a bit of a wild turn.
And what about those championship bikes?
What's behind those?
Is racing more about the rider's courage or is it the machine's engineering?
And what about everyone else?
Why are more young people and women and city commuters suddenly falling in love with motorcycles?
And also, how did the industry that was once known for imitation and limitations become confident enough to compete globally?
Today we're going to explore the speed and the ambition and the technology and the cultural shift that's driving China's motorcycle growth.
And we'll talk about why that engine sound has become so addicting for a lot of people.
I'm here for it, Yusha and Feifei.
I am a huge fan of motorcycles.
Feifei, I asked you before the show and your answer was very short when you said no.
Yeah, not really.
Because, you know, that's my stereotype when it comes to motorcycles.
It's just a way of transportation.
And sometimes it can be a little bit dangerous because just how fast it can travel.
But now apparently, especially with recent news, I'm starting thinking about changing this stereotype about motorcycles.
Oh, really?
How about you, Yushin?
Are you a fan at all?
I get little touch with motorcycles because the city that I was born and raised in All the urban area, was not allowing motorcycle to get in.
But the thing is that when I got into Beijing, everyone that I know that rides motorcycle.
It is a hobby to them.
And they buy, I think, decorations and maybe components for their motorcycles maybe.
Yeah, and they use their spare time to go to the mountains, ride with their friends.
That's a totally, that's quite niche, but it's a hobby that a lot of people have.
I would say it's very similar to having a bicycle as a hobby too, right?
There are bicycle clubs.
There are motorcycle clubs.
The cyclists go riding on the weekends with their friends and they'll go out to the mountains or wherever.
Well, motorcyclists do that as well.
Yeah.
I can say confidently because I had a lot of friends who were deep into motorcycling in Korea.
It's a lifestyle.
It really is.
They become almost obsessed with their bike and what it represents for them.
Well, the reason that this has come up today is because very recently, there was a big race with a surprising outcome.
Yeah.
On May, the 17th 2026, the Chinese motorcycle manufacturer Zhangxue Motorcycles or the brand's name is called ZXMOTO achieved a significant milestone by winning two consecutive rounds in the World SSP category at the World Superbike Championship Czech Station in Prague.
And driver Valentin Dabis secured the victory by overtaking a Yamaha competitor in the final lap, marking the team's fifth championship title of the season.
We have a clip of Valentin Dabis crossing the finish line as reported on Chinese television.
Hmm.
There's no chance.
There's really no chance.
Today, DBS crushed all the doubts.
To all the good drivers.
I'm pushing them behind.
Congratulations.
What did he say?
Yeah, no chance.
No, any chance.
Um, the the beast just crushed all of the doubts on him, and also the motorcycle and also i think for me you know who basically knows nothing about riders, motorcycles and also these champions called world superbike championship.
I dig a little deeper into you know what it doesn't mean when somebody, a rider, wins in this kind of competition.
Apparently, it's more of a collaboration between the rider like this French driver, Valentin Debees, and the motorcycle he's riding as well.
It's not like...
Simply because the rider is really good at, I don't know, steering the wheels.
Yes.
Well, that's part of it.
It's definitely part of it.
But it's not just that.
That's for sure.
And this is really a collaboration because yeah, the rider is French, but the motorcycle, and this is the big news here.
The motorcycle that he rode was made by a Chinese manufacturer.
And this is a big, you said milestone Yuxin, and it absolutely is a milestone, but that's almost an understatement because this was such a shock to this world.
People couldn't believe what happened.
So what's this relationship all about between the French rider and the Chinese motorcycle company?
Yes, the relationship between these two are inseparable, and victory is usually the result of both human skill and also engineering performance working together.
And I think that is why a lot of Chinese people are so excited about this.
In the victory of not only the driver, but also the motorcycle manufacturer, ZX Moto.
Yeah, so it's part.
I don't know if it's 50-50 or 60-40 or 30-70 I don't know what the ratio would be but it's part skill of the driver.
But also equally or just as important is the quality of the machine that they're riding.
It's kind of like Formula One, isn't it?
It's like a team working.
And so when we're talking about this particular Chinese brand because it's also my first time hearing about this brand Zhangxue or ZX Moto
And when it comes to this season of championships in motorcycling, apparently there is a ranking for the riders.
For example, this French driver Dibis, has risen to the second place in his individual standings with 147 points.
And also the ZX Moto also has some sort of a ranking as well.
Right now that brand currently holds the third place in the manufacturer standing with 149 points.
Yeah, and this name, this company, ZX Moto is a name that is new to us too many.
I've watched many like youtube reviewers when it comes to motorcycling and when this um the beast won his first title i think the may 7th champion game is he it's fifth championship title within the season when he first won uh, the winning title A lot of reviewers out there are commenting about it's finally time that we're seeing some non-legacy brands in the motorcycle.
Yeah, legacy brands.
You're talking about Ducati, Kawasaki, Yamaha.
Yeah.
These are very well-established motorcycle brands that have been around for a really really, really long time.
There are other companies too from other countries.
And but China has never been represented ever.
And this company, that's one shocking, wonderful thing about this story.
But the other shocking wonderful thing about this story is that this Chinese motorcycle company ZX Moto, it's not even a Chinese legacy brand anymore.
It's a brand new, relatively brand new company on its own.
It's in many sense is a newcomer in the motorcycle manufacturing.
First of all, the brand was officially established in April 2024.
And as of May 2026, has been operating for only two years.
And also in the competition in the Superbike World Championship.
World SSP category ZX Model only officially entered as a team for the 2026 season.
Right.
So it is also the first full season of competition that it participated in.
It's almost unbelievable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And also when it comes to, I think, the founder himself.
This is such a touching story.
Zhang Xue, he's an enthusiast when it comes to motorcycling.
I think on the Chinese internet, one of the first clips that went viral about him is when he was in his 20 around 20 year olds.
And he wants to showcase his motorcycling skills.
And he basically rides his very old and shabby motorcycles to chase any reporters out there to try to show them.
I have the skills and maybe some professional teams out there are interested in me.
So, eventually, of course, he sort of transitioned his identity from a rider to a manufacturer.
But I guess it's.
I think a lot of people are commenting about his stories, about persistence and also passion.
I won't say hobby, just one mission for decades of time.
And without knowing what would turn out in the future, it definitely needs more than passion.
It needs more than confidence and also belief, I guess.
And what's important about this time is that the success is attributed to the specific bike, 820RR.
That's the racing car which has been revamped, praise for its speed and also improved handling, and the founder, zhang xue, has expressed optimism about contending for the annual championship after this fifth championship for the whole season.
And um, let me finish the.
I think the relationship between the rider and the bike Because, you know, even the most talented rider still depends heavily on the motorcycle underneath the machine.
Yes, the engine power, acceleration, aero dynamics, and electronic suspension setup and also reliability can all determine whether they can fight for a win.
And, what is more important, that I think the number is 97 of all of the components of this bike are all domestically produced and designed.
Which is another wonderful part of this story because, historically speaking, we're going to get to this in just a sec.
A lot of the parts that were used on Chinese motorcycles came from other countries.
They were imported.
Or perhaps bikes were deconstructed and then put back together using built here components.
But this is all domestically produced, which is another great part of the story.
I want to share this as well, because I was watching – I'm not a huge international motorcycle race guy.
I don't keep up with standings and stuff like that.
But after I learned about this Chinese company's breakthrough –
I wanted to know what the international fans were saying about this.
So I watched some videos.
Well, I want to share this.
The founder was at the race.
I'm 99% sure it was him.
When De Bees crossed the finish line, he was there and he was surrounded by his team, and the tears were just rolling down his face because his dream finally came true and he was able to achieve something that he probably thought was never even possible within his lifetime.
So that was one really cool thing to see.
The other thing, the comments that were there.
People were saying When this company, when this bike and this rider won the first race, the comments were like oh yeah, fluke.
Fluke means like lucky one time thing.
Not going to happen again.
This is a Chinese motorcycle.
What are you talking about?
Then it happened again.
And now this is getting to be a regular thing.
And now people are saying oh, we need to really pay attention to this rider and this motorcycle and this motorcycle company, because this is a very real thing.
And the fact that this company has only been around... I want to reiterate that point.
Has only been around since 2024 and is competing with these legacy brands that have been making motorcycles and racing bikes for decades and decades and decades.
It's absolutely astonishing.
And by the way, the price of the bike...
It's also a big difference.
It's $6,000 American.
You can buy it.
Yeah, and also when it comes to those legacy brands' motorcycles, you need to add one more zero to the number.
$30,000 at least, maybe.
I looked up the new Ducati Penegale.
It's called the V4R.
It's $50,000.
Another Ducati, the Street Fighter, is $15,000.
So, I mean, the fact that this is about a fifth... of the price, if not more.
People's minds are blown by this.
Let's go back now, because I find this to be a really interesting story about the origins of motorcycles here in China.
The industry.
I guess you could call it a relatively short development history, especially when you compare it to some other established international brands.
It doesn't go back even 50 years, I don't think.
It has undergone a remarkable 47 years transformation, evolving from some simple and manual, maybe examples and imitations, to globally competitive and high-end manufacturing and manufacturing.
It started in 1979 in Chongqing in southwest China, where engineers from a manufacturer called Jialing reverse engineered a foreign motorcycle and they dissembled a foreign motorcycle and used calipers and angle gags to manually measure every part and then eventually producing hand-drawn designs for the Jia Ling CJ50, which marked the birth of mass-produced civil motorcycles in China.
I love the sounds of motorcycles, so I didn't find this clip.
You found it for me, right?
Thank you for doing that, because I was super curious to know what does the 1979 version of the jowling CJ-50 sound like?
And this is it.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
That is awesome.
If you listen to it really carefully, you can hear some bling, bling, bling, bling sounds.
And that's a signature sound, apparently, from that motorcycle.
Exactly.
And also, I have a lot of memories flooding back in.
Because when it comes to this kind of... You've heard that sound before.
Yeah, because where I grew up in Mongolia, motorcycles are very common for herders.
They only ride horses to herd their sheep.
Nowadays, they use motorcycles.
And that is the sounds I heard when I was a child.
At that time, did you know it was the Jialing CJ50 from Chongqing?
I know, because the motorcycles are everywhere, produced by Jialing.
Not only Jialing, but also, for example, Lifan or Zhongshan, and also there's Qianjiang and Dayun, a number of them.
And also quite funny is I have a lot of friends back in high school.
For instance, they have shirts from those motorcycle brands because their parents bought one of the motorcycles.
But at that time it was considered like cheap transport.
When it comes to cheap and convenient transport,
So that's why you can hear that the sound is very similar to a tractor at some point.
Yeah, I guess so.
But Chongqing became really important during the 1980s and 1990s, Yuxin.
It became the center of China's motorcycle boom.
Yeah.
A lot of these brands, like Fei-Fei just mentioned, Zhongshan, Longting, and...
Lee Fan rapidly expanded through some low-cost manufacturing and even some of them through exports.
And by around 2000 Chinese motorcycles dominated many Southeast Asian markets, like Vietnam is one example.
And as Li Xueping from the Chongqing Automobile and Motorcycle Industry Association noted, that at one point, one out of every four motorcycles in China was made in Chongqing.
So the city is, I think, also even now, it is well known for the manufacturing of motorcycles.
Maybe that's why I said, didn't I?
When I came back from Chongqing, I said, I didn't see shared bicycles anywhere.
I think that might be more what's happening, rather than a dislike of the bicycle and a love of the motorcycle.
All right, so that brought us into the early 2000s.
But at that point, there were some pretty fierce price wars.
And the core technology of these motorcycles at that time was pretty weak.
And that is what led to the, I guess, people being aware of the industry limitations.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And when it comes to, for example, a lot of the parts that these bikes need are basically heavily relying on imports.
And that's not only revealing that, when it comes to only producing cheap, alternatives are not going to sustain your development when it comes to brand growth.
And also, at the same time, that you need also to catch up on when it comes to innovation and sustain your growth.
So that's why, after in the mid 2000s and onwards, a lot of Chinese manufacturers began to partnering with global brands to learn about their engineering and production standards.
And also they are trying to, I guess, transform themselves from a basic transportation tools to a lifestyle and adventure products.
That I think is tightly linked to a lot of current identities when it comes to being free, to being adventurous and travel.
But I saw a case online.
Basically says when somebody is trying to go out traveling on a bike, traveling between Sichuan and Xizang on highways, he couldn't find a domestic produced type that can sustain this kind of journey.
So that is also sort of a wake-up call for them.
So we need to produce more high-end products on the market.
High-end products, high-quality products.
Pardon me that are being domestically produced the 820 RR the bike that we're talking about in that race the core components like the engine in the frame and the electronic controls those are 100% independently developed supported by a network of manufacturers across the country here.
It has a 97% localization rate, and that's amazing news.
Also amazing is that Chinese brands motorcycle brands they're not just competing on price anymore with foreign brands.
They're successfully entering the European market.
Now the European market, when it comes to motorcycles, is a really high standard market.
So they're taking a slice of that market share in Spain and Italy.
Italy, famous for its motorcycles, right?
Ducati, I mentioned before, that's an Italian brand.
And the growth of the industry is the quality of the industry is improving in China.
And I don't know if there's a direct correlation between the improvement in quality and the sudden interest of, not racers but people like you and I.
I don't know if there's a connection there or not, but what we do know is that China's consumer motorcycle industry is doing very, very well.
Yeah, the industry has shown steady growth in production and also sales and exports.
From January to November 2025, China produced approximately...
20.11 million motorcycles and sold 20.03 million, marking a year-on-year increase of over 10%.
That's the data from China Chamber of Commerce for Motorcycle.
And on profitability.
Significantly, the growth in economic benefit has also outpaced the growth in volume, because for the first 10 months of 2025, Total profits reached 9718 billion yuan.
That's also a 36% increase compared to last year.
So indicating a very substantial rise in product added value and operational quality, along with, like I said, the export growth, the popularity in the European markets.
Last year, the value of motorcycle exports increased by 25%, more than 25%.
So that's proof of the popularity or the increase in popularity overseas, too.
So now let's get to like the everyday new riders.
We're seeing more female riders becoming fans of motorcycles.
More young people are emerging as kind of a new force in the motorcycle market, too.
Yeah, I have a lot of friends actually who are riders and I guess I just did a very quick and not very precise calculation out there.
I think 80% of them are females.
And so they spend a lot.
Not only they talk when they gather around, they talk about different models of motorcycles and also the gears, the helmets, the outfits and also what kind of other things that you can buy when you're riding in that motorcycle.
Boots.
Yeah, boots and things.
The pants come with like guards inside, like kneecap guards for your butt.
I've only paid attention to the helmets.
Those are very expensive.
And the helmets have a lot of different decoration colors out there so they can choose.
And then after that, I lose track of their colors.
Because that's not something that I would pay attention.
But definitely female riders have been one of the new forces on the market.
And that's driving also when it comes to manufacturers, to more customized and localized designs of new models.
And for younger generation, there is also another boom.
It's called motocross boom among children and teenagers because parents born mostly in the 1980s and 90s are increasingly supportive parents.
Of this kind of sport, viewing it as a way to, you know, help booster their physical fitness and also responsibility.
Motocross is like the off road version of motorcycles.
So like in the dirt, upon slopes and mountains.
Yeah, jumps and things like that.
And they have parks here too, don't they, for that?
Yeah, and I think they will have these smaller versions of these motorcycles for children.
And then it is quite fierce as well.
And you can see the competition in them and everything.
This trend is also supported by some construction of some international standard off-road parks, such as the Qinghan Off-Road Park in Shanxi.
So a lot of parents will take their children to these kind of places.
It is an exercise, also sport.
I think, not only for the competition and also the sense of achievement, but also from a very physical perspective.
Build resilience and so on and so forth.
My dad bought me a motorcycle when I was a kid.
Do you like it?
Yeah.
Freedom.
He couldn't convince me every day to get off of that motorcycle and come in for dinner, which is what inspired, I think, my love of motorcycles.
That was a very small engine.
It was a 75cc.
You'll see CC attached to motorcycle engines.
It's basically just the size.
The racing bike that we were talking about, that was 800cc, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, 400cc, 600cc, things like that.
I fell in love when I was a kid.
Later in life, I said in Korea I had all these friends who were super into motorcycling.
And they had Harley Davidsons.
Those are those really obnoxiously loud, unnecessarily loud machines that many people get annoyed by.
Then I had the friends who were into the racing bikes, too.
So I bought a Yamaha R1, which was one of the fastest bikes in the world.
The reason, Feifei, I'll try to explain why people get obsessed with motorcycles.
I'll try to understand.
When you have, there's two things.
When you have that amount of power between your legs, it's a thrilling feeling.
It's unbelievable.
You just hit that accelerator a little bit and shoom, off it goes. like a bullet into the wind.
That's one thing.
The other thing is that when you remove the walls of a car and it's just you Nothing can beat that.
Nothing.
There's something poetically romantic about it.
That's why we use words like freedom and liberty and lifestyle when we talk about people who are really into motorcycling as a hobby.
Feifei, from what I know from you, you would love it.
I can totally see you in a leather jacket and a Harley Davidson zooming down the Chinese highways.
Yeah, maybe that's the reason I've never ride a motorcycle before.
Yeah.
One thing is it's really fast.
Yes.
It sort of scares me on some level.
Which is why I don't own that bike anymore.
Because one day in Korea I was on, there was a section outside of Seoul that was very well known to be like a very windy road section very quiet, not that many cars.
So motorcyclists really love that stretch of road.
So one day I was out there by myself and I went into a corner.
Now, when you go into a corner, you're supposed to calculate the speed.
And so you take that corner at the right angle, right?
Well, I was going too fast.
So I came out of the corner a little bit early and I drifted toward the yellow line, toward the center line.
Right then, a car came around the corner.
Whoa.
My motorcycle jacket brushed along the side of that car and I was going pretty fast and that car was going pretty fast.
I was inches away from death.
I think I immediately stopped the bike.
I was shaking.
I was shaking.
I sold it the next day.
Of course.
I realized I'm not good enough.
I'm not talented enough to handle this level of power and this level of speed.
Because when you have a bike that size, you can't resist the temptation to go fast.
You can't because that's what it's built for.
So I got rid of it the very next day.
This is what I would say to anyone who's interested.
If you are going to get yourself one of these machines, albeit a street bike or maybe an easy riding machine, make sure you take the proper measures to to make sure that you know exactly what you're doing, because it's always safety first, because something can go wrong in the blink of an eye and we don't want that to happen.
Now back to the Chinese industry.
I think it's such an amazing thing what's happened here, because it's been a really impressive ride for Chinese motorcycles.
Within a matter of a few decades, we've gone from here.
I love that. to hear in 47 years.
And I can't wait, personally can't wait to see where the market goes next.
