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Chinese with Some Money Have Their Own Reasons for Choosing e-Bikes over Cars

Many Westerners believe with a dire sense of urgency, that, as Bagatelle-Black sets forth: "Soon the average Chinese worker may be able to afford a car."

This has become a conventional fear and an article of faith in the West.

I believed it without reservation before I lived abroad -- that is, before I gained some distance, over a period of time, from the media wash that tries to shape our opinions.

Why would a sensible person doubt that the average Chinese worker will soon be faced with the choice between an e-bike and an automobile?

First, the Chinese workers who can afford a car are the wrong Chinese.

They live in the cities, mainly in the prosperous southeast of China.

City dwellers do not want cars.  They have nowhere to park them.  They have no idea what they would do with them. 

Yes, some buy them.  However, auto  sales may not be on the massive scale that Westerners imagine.

Second, afford means something different in China.

Chinese do not buy on credit.  They generally cannot understand why a family would get into debt for the purchase of a material good.

In relation to cars, in the West "afford" means having enough money for a down payment and monthly installments.  In China "afford" means paying with cash, all at once.

An observer of human nature would expect people to think long and hard before handing over a year's salary, or more, to a car salesman.  Certainly cultural acceptance of easy credit has had a pivotal role in the proliferation of automobiles in the West.

Yes, some Chinese give credit a try, but this may not occur on the scale Westerners imagine, especially away from the most prosperous cities of the southeast.

Clearly, in China there can be a real difference between being able to afford a car and actually purchasing one.

Therefore, the rise in China's financial power to which Bagatelle-Black points, may not equate to an enormous increase in car sales in the way that in America, in contrast, the creation of many new jobs may be automatically a windfall for car dealers.

Note also that new jobs in China do not pay so well.  Salaries are kept low by a staggering overabundance of unemployed and underemployed workers, including much of the recent generation of university graduates, eager for work at any wage.

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