From Learning by Example to Independent R&D: China’s Motorcycle Learning Curve | Motorcycle Memory

This is not a story of a blanket overtake. Engineering, products, manufacturing, brand, racing and market reach are six different tests: what was learned, what became an in-house capability, and what still falls short in direct comparison.

BMW produced the R 71 from 1938 to 1941 with a 746 cc side-valve flat-twin engine.

The official model card settles the dates and specification. It says nothing about how the design later moved across borders.

No material gap affects this specification.

The M-72’s design can be traced to the BMW R 71. What remains disputed is how the Soviet side obtained drawings and sample bikes; museum accounts disagree.

The design relationship is well supported. Neither formal licensing nor covert copying can yet be treated as the only answer.

Contracts, purchase records or factory files are still needed to settle how the material was obtained.

The open record supports this lineage: BMW R 71 → Soviet M-72 → Chinese Chang Jiang 750. It does not support calling the Chang Jiang 750 a direct copy of the R75.

Official and museum records cover the R 71–M-72 link. A Beijing government report on a Beijing Auto Museum exhibition supports the Chang Jiang 750 being developed from the M-72, while a Jiangxi institutional account adds an attributed Hongdu recollection. These are not one continuous transfer file, so the chain remains an inference.

The 1957 assignment, sample-bike handover or original Hongdu measurement file is still needed to settle the assignment, sample, measurement, trial-production and naming milestones.

The State Environmental Protection Administration's 2005 batch 43 type-approval register still lists the CJ750B, CJ750B-3 and CJ750BJ sidecar models. The open record therefore does not support saying that the entire Chang Jiang 750 family ceased production around 1999.

The type-approval register confirms listed models, applicant, engine codes and suppliers. It does not by itself establish production volume, and it does not make every suffix variant mechanically identical.

An exact end date still requires factory production records for each CJ750B, B-3 and BJ variant. No family-wide cessation year is published here.