The Best Running Shoes You Can’t Get Your Hands On - The Atlantic

For the past 50 years, the American running-shoe market has been dominated by Western brands, including Nike, Adidas, Brooks, and, more recently, Hoka. But over the past year or so, running Subreddits and message boards have been buzzing about shoes made by Chinese companies. These shoes, their fans say, are at least as good as other brands’ and can be had for one-half to two-thirds of the price. Yowana Wamala, the creator of the running-shoe app Supwell, told me that he would love the Chinese shoes he now wears even if they cost more: “The performance-to-value ratio is unmatched.”<br>As someone whose lifetime mileage to date tops 130,000 and who writes about running, I had personal and professional reasons to look into this phenomenon, and I’m a convert too. I paid $90, shipping and tariff included, for the Li-Ning Red Hare 9 Pro. It’s the equivalent of the Puma Deviate Nitro 4 ($170) and Saucony Endorphin Speed 5 ($175). The BMAI Jingtan 3.0 Turbo cost me $161, again including shipping and tariff. The shoe is akin—but superior—to racing shoes such as the Brooks Hyperion Elite 5 ($275). I’ve run in hundreds of models from dozens of brands over the past 47 years, and the BMAI model and a few other Chinese shoes are among my all-time favorites because of their combination of ride (the feel underfoot), versatility, durability, and price. (I received some of the Chinese shoes I tried as free samples for a review for another publication, as is standard practice for running-shoe reviews.)<br>The problem was how hard the shoes were to get. In some cases, I shopped on AliExpress, the Chinese online marketplace, which was not straightforward to use. In others, I had to enlist the help of a Chinese shoe influencer. Unfortunately, fans of Chinese running shoes might need to keep using these kinds of work-arounds. It turns out that some of the very factors that make the shoes so good at such low prices mean that most won’t be widely available in the U.S. anytime soon.<br>How can Chinese running shoes be both high quality and inexpensive? Answering that requires a little background about running shoes in general, which have undergone major changes in recent years that have helped runners break record after record.<br>The primary advancement over the past decade has been in the materials used in the midsole, the part above the sole itself that provides cushioning to the foot. Traditional midsoles were made of ethylene-vinyl acetate and could be higher, to provide more cushioning, or lower, to save weight. That trade-off no longer matters. Today, midsole foams made of compounds such as polyether block amide, thermoplastic polyester elastomer, and aliphatic thermoplastic polyurethane are much more lightweight and return as much as 90 percent of the energy put into them, providing a previously impossible combination of performance and protection.<br>These modern midsole foams are made in Chinese factories that contract with shoe brands. A top manufacturer, Shincell, makes midsoles for Western brands including Adidas and Puma, and Chinese brands such as Anta and Li-Ning. But some Western brands—among them Nike—import the raw materials for these foams into China, adding to their production costs. Hui Wang, a financial analyst and influential Chinese  shoe reviewer, told me that industry reports peg polyether block amide made in China at approximately 35 to 50 percent of the cost of imported versions. Wang also explained that other running-shoe parts, such as outsoles and uppers (which cover the top of the foot), are produced in factories located near ones that manufacture midsole foam, in Fujian and Guangdong provinces. “Basically everything you need to make a running shoe—even a shoebox and a hang tag—is right there in that cluster,” Wang said in an email.<br>Alex Hutchinson: Is it the shoes?<br>China has seen a running boom in the past decade. Although Chinese companies including Do-Win and Anta have been around for decades, the growing interest in running in China has led them to greatly improve the quality of their offerings. New brands—BMAI, Dynafish, Runsifly—have popped up in the past few years, as the manufacturing cluster that Wang described has made it easy to make excellent shoes. Some of China’s millions of runners pay high prices for the prestige of wearing Nike or Adidas, but more and more are buying domestic brands.<br>The factory setup in China also shortens production cycles. In China, moving from prototype to an order for mass production can take as little as three months, according to Lei Yu, a U.S.-based consultant who has tried to bring Chinese brands to the United States. Western brands typically develop shoes over two or more years. The sped-up timeline for Chinese brands means that their shoe technology can be more advanced. For example, only a few higher-end Western shoes available now have outsoles made from casting polyurethane, which is lighter and...