Are Chinese motorcycles good value for money, or cheap, unreliable junk?

Ask this question in the forum, and you’ll get some very opinionated answers. We see them all the time in the story comments. Some people don’t want to buy Chinese motorcycles because they disagree with the country’s government. Others don’t want to buy Chinese motorcycles because they question the machines’ quality.

But are Chinese bikes really as bad as those people think?This YouTuber and his wife bought a pair of Chinese motorcycles and took them all the way from Cape Town to Cairo, and found out for themselves.

You can see the whole video above, but the tl/dw is: They rode 9,360 miles north over three months, on all sorts of bad roads, andsaythey had seven breakdowns.

But after watching it, I’d suggest they only really had one breakdown, losing a chain adjuster—everything else was exactly the sort of smashing and bashing and general mechanical mayhem you encounter when you’re riding in developing countries on mud tracks and putting dodgy gas in your bike. Especially if you consider that they aren’t even riding dual sport-style bikes—he describes them as loose copies of the Suzuki GN-series cruisers, with a 200cc air-cooled engine that looks like a Honda clone. And is it really fair to blame a commuter/delivery bike for not handling a beating on a road that’s best suited to a dirt bike?

You make your own decision, but from my perspective, I don’t think they fared badly at all. As the end of the video points out, the minor mechanical mishaps were all quickly repaired, with parts sourced on-site, since these motorcycles are very common in Africa, while a breakdown on a bigger bike might require a long wait for parts. As the video puts it: “In the end, the Chinese bikes made it very easy, We blended into the scenery.” There’s a lot to be said for that.

By the way, you should check out the rest of the AdventureBikeTroop channelhere; there’s lots of practical overlanding experience on display, with 4x4s and motorcycles including big bikes, and small. See a Yamaha AG200 run below (this farm bike should be very familiar to members of the Tee Dub Club!).