30 years on, China's Tour de France breakthrough is still a long way off

In 1964, when France formally recognised the People’s Republic of China, president Charles De Gaulle couched the decision as a pragmatic one: “China is a big country inhabited by many Chinese.” A country that made up almost a fifth of the world’s population, he implied, simply could not be ignored. 

That almost overwhelming vastness is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to international sport, as outgoing national coach Lionel Marie explained to Domestique as he awaited the start of stage 5 of the Tour of Guangxi in a sweltering Yizhou. 

In purely statistical terms, a country with a population of 1.4 billion should produce cyclists capable of riding and eventually winning the Tour de France. In practice, however, locating that raw talent is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Where do you even begin? 

“Of course, there is one guy somewhere who is strong enough to be at the Tour, but we don’t know where,” Marie smiled. “We have to find them, and this is the problem – where are they? Come on guys, come to us…”

Marie has spent the past four years as manager of the China Anta-Mentec Continental squad and of the Chinese national team, but he leaves the post this winter to move to a new role with the UAE Team ADQ. 

Early in his time in China, Marie routinely talked up the prospect of his team one day making it to the Tour de France. He insists that he still believes in the idea, but he acknowledges that it will take time, perhaps more than he had initially hoped. 

“If one day the federation has the support of the government to do it, then everything is possible,” Marie said. “The potential is big.”

Then again, Chinese cycling has been trading in potential for decades. Indeed, this year marked the 30th anniversary of professional cycling’s first foray into the country with the inaugural Tour of China, which was organised by Medalist Sports and sponsored, somewhat improbably, by Kent Cigarettes. 

A different time, though many of the same tropes persist to the present day, not least the concept of some European riders viewing a late-season trip to China as punishment rather than an adventure. UAE’s decision to relieve Juan Ayuso from a tour of duty in Guangxi this October after he won two stages of the Vuelta a España was a direct echo of the deal Emmanuel Magnien struck with his Castorama team before winning the 1995 Tour de l’Avenir. 

That year’s ambitious Tour of China, which took in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Beijing, was organised in the belief that the country represented a vast, untapped market that was growing rapidly amid Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. Although the race would only last for two editions, that idea of China as cycling's elusive Eldorado has endured, first with Tour of Beijing and now with the Tour of Guangxi.

In the aftermath of Beijing Olympics, where former UCI president Hein Verbruggen had been chairman of the coordination commission, cycling’s governing body pitched the Tour of Beijing as a legacy event to be run by its short-lived race promotion arm, Global Cycling Promotion.

“It was a golden opportunity for bike brands, team sponsors and riders to have a profile in China and open a new market,” GCP chief Alain Rumpf said earlier this year, though his event endured teething troubles that included a threatened boycott by teams over the UCI’s attempts to remove radio earpieces, as well as tacit opposition from ASO, even though the Tour de France organiser still came on board as a technical partner. The event would survive for four editions before Brian Cookson opted against renewing the contract after replacing Pat McQuaid as UCI president.

“It was a huge opportunity missed by the whole sport to keep this race going and build on it,” said Rumpf, though he acknowledged that encouraging meaningful Chinese participation in the Tour of Beijing had been surprisingly difficult too. In this corner of the cycling world, Rumpf discovered, the Olympic Games and the quadrennial National Games of China – essentially a domestic Olympics for the Chinese provinces – trump everything else.

“Everyone’s training to be successful at these games, and so the Tour of Beijing was actually a distraction,” Rumpf explained. “The provinces didn’t always want to lend their riders to the national team, so we didn’t always have the best Chinese riders in the race.”

The same issue colours local participation at the Tour of Guangxi, which was added to the WorldTour calendar in 2017, and the provincial committees still wield significant power within Chinese cycling, as Marie discovered during his tenure. The 2025 National Games have just got under way in Guangzhou, and the build-up throughout the year meant that Marie was without some key riders for the Tour of Guangxi and the World Championships.

“The National Games are the year after the Olympics, and in no way was it possible for me to bring all the best riders because all the provinces are fighting each other all season,” Marie says. “It means they don’t let the guys come in with us, so that was a frustration this year.

“That mindset is still there. The main goal is the Olympic Games and then it’s the National Games. For the World Championships in Rwanda, the goal was to do a good result in the mixed relay, but I had to put a guy who retired two years ago into the team. He had to restart training in June when they asked him during the national championships. It was a challenge, but we tried to do our best with what we had.”

Despite that insularity, Chinese cycling has enjoyed some international success in recent years. In February, Xianjing Lyu became the first Chinese male rider to win the road race at the Asian Championships, 21 years after Junying Zhang became the first and only Chinese woman to do so. In 2024, meanwhile, Lyu was the first Chinese rider to finish the men’s road race at the Olympics.

“Last year we wanted to get to the Olympics, and this year our main goal was to be Asian champion, so we were pretty happy with that,” Marie said, though he is aware that one rider, now 27, has been carrying the entire programme at times. “Now he’s starting to be older, but Xianjing Lyu is the best Chinese rider so far.”

The hope is to uncover more riders of his talent and expose them to international competition at a younger age. The Chinese national team in Guangxi featured six riders under the age of 25, including 19-year-old Rongqi Zhang. 

“We have a few guys who have big potential, and the team is bringing more and more credibility to China,” Marie said. “It also helps when former riders from the team go back to their provinces because they can explain to them how we train in Europe, so they become almost like coaches.

“But it’s a long process and we still have a lot to do, because China is so big. The provinces are very powerful, so we have to go slowly when it comes to improving coaching and training methods. In Yunnan province, for example, they built a covered track that’s a kilometre long, and they do 200k training rides on that that track. Imagine, 200 laps! You break the brains of the guys… But our guys are slowly starting to be stronger, and the staff are learning too.”

The most notable Chinese performance in Guangxi came from one of Marie’s former riders. Haoyu Su lined out for the national team two years ago, but this time out, he was present in the colours of XDS-Astana, and he was the last man standing from the break on the toughest stage to Nongla, earning the day’s most combative rider prize in the process.

“I didn’t believe I could be a pro cyclist until I was 18 years old, so I started late,” the bespectacled Fu explained in the mixed zone afterwards. “Fortunately, I could make it here and I want to keep improving.”

The Beijing native was added to the roster of Alexandre Vinokourov’s team after Chinese bike manufacturer XDS came on board as title sponsor. He will know that his compatriots who have made the top level before him have rarely lasted long. Li Fuyu had one-year spells at Discovery Channel and RadioShack, while Xu Gang raced for Lampre-Merida and Meiyin Wang had a three-year stint with Bahrain-Merida. 

Only Ji Cheng, who spent a decade with Skil-Shimano as it grew into a WorldTour outfit, had a sustained career at the top level in Europe. The ‘Breakaway Killer,’ as he was affectionately known, became the first Chinese rider at the Tour de France in 2014, but nine years on from his retirement, he remains the exception to the rule.

At this year’s Tour of Guangxi, there were whispers – perhaps wishful – in the race caravan that there be will a Chinese WorldTour team within the coming years. In truth, those rumours have bubbled up intermittently at least since the time of the Tour of Beijing, with a big new project seemingly forever a couple of years away. 

It’s worth remembering that in 2016, Chinese entity TJ Sport Consultation had struck an agreement to take over the WorldTour licence owned by Lampre-Merida, only for the deal to fall through that winter. Mauro Gianetti, then working as a consultant for the Italian team, secured late backing from Abu Dhabi. The squad became UAE Team Emirates, Gianetti became the general manager, and the rest is history.

The arrival of the mammoth XDS as Astana’s title sponsor and bike supplier last year brought the idea of a Chinese WorldTour team back to the fore, even if the squad retains a resolutely Kazakhstani image for now. No matter, as WorldTour squads reckon with the hunt for bigger and bigger budgets, the search for potential sponsors is extending well beyond the cycling’s traditional heartlands.

In 2025, as in 1995, China is still viewed by many in Europe as cycling’s new economic frontier. But three decades on, the various points of contact still haven’t yet led to a clear and obvious pathway for Chinese riders to the WorldTour. The revolution, if it ever happens, will come gradually.

“It’s a completely different culture to Europe,” Marie says. “But all the bikes are made in China so now everyone wants to find a sponsor here. We get a lot of messages – ‘Can you help us bring in a Chinese rider because of the market in China?’ And if in Europe, they have interest in bringing Chinese riders like that, then it’s a good way to get to the Tour de France one day…”