We know that the Chinese government has the political will to be able to enact unpopular social policies that it feels necessary (i.e., the one child policy). So why didn’t the government make sure that the streets remained mostly usable for bicycles? I hear that bicycle riders are now marginalized and a car culture has taken over. This seems completely unsustainable, and out of character for an overpopulated communist country like China. I’ve tried looking this up on the internet but can’t find much. I’m obviously using the wrong search terms.
China hasn’t been communist for decades.
Where are you getting this information? Last I heard the One Child Policy had overwhelming popular support.
China has never been communist by any definition (including the CPC’s own) other than “run by a party claiming to support communism”.
I’m still new here, but my early observations are…
Seems like very few object, although I’ve a coworker whose non-mainland husband entitles them to multiple children.
Streets by definition are made for cars. In my area huge hunks of the street are reserved for bicycles and motorized bicycles. Compared to my home in Michigan, it seems awesome. Once my household good arrive, I’m most definitely planning on getting back and forth to work on my bike, as many days as I can. In Michigan, that’s impossible.
As for the car culture “taking over,” well, I hope so. My company’s market share is really low here, and I’d like to see it skyrocket. 
I’d enjoy seeing a link. But I doubt “unsustainable.” People have been saying that about the USA for years, and we get by just fine. Just like in basic economics, enough people use cars, bikes, busses, and subways that everything kind of reaches an equilibrium.
What’s so unsustainable about it? The environmental impact? We’re talking about a country that opens a new coal plant every other week. Infrastructure-wise? Sure there’d be a problem if Beijing got 20 million cars overnight, but that’s not going to happen.
Furthermore, how is encouraging car culture out of character for a (nominally) communist country? The old eastern bloc countries put huge amounts of effort into trying to build auto industries and mobilizing their populations was one of the big industrial goals they tried to meet, with generally mixed results. See the Trabant for example.
The reason is economic development.
Car domestic production and sales in China went from 2.07 million in 2000 to 5.71 million in 2005. Now …
Car production and sales have been a huge part of consumer spending in China. Their hope is to become a major exporter of cars as well, and their plan to do so to to leapfrog into electric vehicles. The logic behind that is that the rest of the world has a huge headstart on ICE expertise but everyone else is at near ground zero on EVs just like them. Meanwhile they have some very big battery makers (BYD, Lishen, CBAK, and others), lots of the raw materials that may be in demand, and presumably the ability to drive its own domestic market into that segment in order to bootstrap the volume and drive down price.
Meanwhile the problems of the sustainability of cars as an economic driver are already becoming apparent - the main point of the linked article being that the new 5 year plan is moving away from rapid growth domestic ICE even in the short term:
There are multiple reasons why it is not sustainable to continue to increase Chinese domestic auto sales at this pace, despite the huge benefit it has been in developing a consumer economy in China. China produces less oil domestically than does the United States and they have no desire to be dependent on events in the MENA region like the US is. And the infrastructure in the major cities cannot handle the current traffic load, let alone further increases. Major cities have been recently implementing plans to control the congestion, limiting the number of plates available, raising parking fees, and so on.
Yeah, last time I was in Nanjing (a few years ago), it didn’t really seem that bicycles were getting “marginalized”. Pedestrians, definitely; anyone in a vehicle would knock you down without a second thought. But bicycles? Not really.
Because, way back when, when China was first opening to the West and trying to modernize a peasant agrarian economy, the Chinese leaders bought into the notion that no country has become a manufacturing powerhouse without a strong automotive industry. Looks like they were correct too.
The other issue is that to not allow the burdgeoning middle class the opportunity to buy a car would create it’s own set of problems. The “contract” that the government has with its citizenry can be boiled down to “you don’t question our right to rule, and we will let you get rich.” What’s the use of getting rich if you can’t be stuck in a traffic jam in your BMW 7 series?
That might have been a surprise to the ancient Romans (all roads lead to Rome), or the Pharaohs of Egypt, or the early rulers of China, etc. They were all building streets back then, so they would be ready a few thousand years later when cars were invented?
Context, man. Ok, maybe “by definition” was imprecise, but everyone else knows what I mean.
Roads are built to a purpose. Only if roads were build for cars are the roads built for cars.
This, especially. Sufficient appeasement of the masses so they won’t rise up…
Have you gone for a drive yet? After you do you’ll wish Mao was back so he could ban all private car ownership forever.
A license is a high priority for me (international license isn’t valid). In the meantime, I have a driver. I’ll just say for now that driving myself is going to be interesting. 
Hi from Shanghai, literally just got off the plane so only first impressions, but I think the OP is simply mistaken.
The Shanghai metro is excellent, fast, cheap and trains every few minutes. Nicely aircon as well, much better than the sweaty london underground. I’m staying in the french concession, the richest part of town and the private cars on the street are outnumbered by taxis, scooters, bicycles and buses. Plenty of bikes everywhere and scooters as well. There is no “car culture” here that I can see, if a middle class family buys a car it’s for once or twice a week outings or picking up large items, not to commute to work every day.
From what I hear the public transport (mainly subways) is pretty good in most major chinese cities now and they have the worlds most advanced high speed rail network now as well (overtook Japan a few years back).
So how can building excellent metros in every major city and world’s largest high speed rail network be considered “encouraging car culture”?
You guys need to buy Buicks. We Yanks gave up on hotter Pontiacs to feed your weird attachment to cars with portholes.
Ok here’s the CPC’s official policies for their 12th five year plan 2011-2015:
They do encourage more equitable wealth distribution, which will lead to more car ownership but you’ll also notice they include increasing to 45,000 km (!!!) the length of the high speed rail network.
As a foreign entrepreneur who is looking into moving to shanghai, it would be silly to own my own car over here. The public transport network is so good and taxi’s are cheap. I’d just rent a car to go out of town on weekends, or more likely get high speed rail out of shanghai then rent a car at my destination.
Ok, after 3 days in Shanghai I can easily say that this city is far more bike friendly than Sydney or any US city I have been to (LA, Chicago and Vegas mainly).
There are physically separated bike lanes that both bikes and scooters can use on many streets and on other streets seems its legal to ride on the footpath and the footpaths are very wide. Can only speak for Shanghai but based on this the OP has no reality behind his belief.
China’s big. It’s almost exactly the size of the United States. While high-speed rail is awesome between, say, Shanghai and Nanjing, it still has the same problems as high-speed rail would have in the United States, i.e., it’s slow compared to air travel. Like the Chinese ghost cities, there’s a lot of mumbling that the rail system is unsustainable (kind of the opposite of what the OP was trying to get at).