When I moved to Beijing two years ago, I decided to pay for a gym membership. Several locals warned it was financially unwise. China was nursing the scars of the pandemic and a property crisis. Many gyms were going bankrupt, taking members’ fees with them and leaving behind a trail of disgruntled customers and abandoned treadmills.
On my first visit to Oxygym, I met the manager, Will Wan. A sturdy man with a jovial exterior, he was keen to sell his gym. Located near the central business district, Oxygym is a high-end chain that caters largely to office workers. Facilities include tanks that pump oxygen into the air — hence the name — a highly prized commodity in polluted Beijing.
Yet instead of extolling the 130 machines that spread across the sprawling two-floor complex (plus dance studios, basketball courts and saunas), Will had found another way to impress me: the company finances. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of gyms in China shrank from just under 50,000 to less than 30,000. Many of these bankrupt rivals, Will explained, had aggressively expanded into less-affluent cities, which were harder hit by the property crisis. Oxygym had not expanded beyond the capital, a decision that protected it from the worst of the downturn.