China: Bike manufacturing and sales through the roof

You know, on a Tuesday afternoon, there's nothing we like more than kicking back with a cup of tea and curling up with the latest copy of China Machinery Daily.

Today, we read that despite all the gloomy global economic news, Chinese exports of bicycles increased almost 15 percent last year.

According to statistics by the General Administration of Customs, China exported 59.23 million units of bicycles in 2007, valued at US$ 2.17bn...In 2007, China exported 18.17 million bicycles to the USA, up by 1.1%, while the exports to Japan and the ASEAN countries increased by 7.4% and 5.3% respectively to 8.41 million and 5.32 million units. The said three markets together accounted for 53.9% of China's total bicycle exports.

Presumably, most of those frame-sets were equipped with Shimano parts. (Those that weren't? They were equipped with Dynacrap-brand parts.)

Once you factor in Taiwan manufacturing, that gives you a pretty good idea why people say that roughly 9 out of ten bikes come from Asia.