China's 'sharing economy' booms, but can it last?

I don&#x27;t know about renting basketballs but I do believe in bicycle sharing schemes. The article mentions the fairly recent entries in Singapore of &quot;stationless&quot; rental bikes, and I have seen first hand how this is going.<p>Sharing is appealing. And thanks to VC money, it&#x27;s cheap. But as soon as it goes from a small local thing with passionate users to a big business with a big cross section of the overall population, dynamics change.<p>In Singapore the sharing companies are the present beneficiaries of a government &quot;wait and see&quot; period. The more popular they become, the more incidents occur that will do them no favours. Bikes dumped in rivers. Bikes parked in car traffic lanes on busy roads. Bikes parked in residential racks. Bikes hidden from view to prevent sharing.<p>This is ugly. This is what it looks like when your shared goods are widely adopted with no expensive enforcement. This is happening in Singapore, one of the most rule-abiding, nice cities in the world.<p>You want a million customers? The woodwork is buzzing.

This is on a renting economy.<p>Sharing economy I feel usually refers to a person-to-person marketplace where asset ownership is decentralized (i.e. airbnb you rent out your room or uber you rent you a ride in your car).<p>That said, I agree with most comments that bike renting sounds quite useful, but things like umbrella renting sound a bit more dicey.

For bicycle sharing schemes, yes, for many other projects&#x2F;companies, NO.<p>There are lots meaningless &#x27;sharing economy&#x27; projects out there are for the solo purpose of getting cheap VC money. The whole &#x27;sharing economy&#x27; term is just an convenient slogan used to sell their meaningless &amp; never profitable project. The most stupid one I&#x27;ve ever seen is the the shared power bank rubbish. You can buy a brand name highly reliable power bank from jd.com for $7, if that is too expensive, jd.com has $3 power bank available as well. Yet, people still started numerous shared power bank companies asking for $15 deposit to rent their dirty &amp; ugly power bank for a fee.<p>That being said, it does offer some good entertainments for the public - Wang Sicong, the only child of the richest Chinese promised to eat poo should such power bank sharing schemes can end up being successful.

Here is an interesting video from a Westerner living in China about bike sharing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Hi9G1jLUeUk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Hi9G1jLUeUk</a>

nothing lasts in china, even communism