From Zhang Xue's "Counterattack" to How to Break Through "The End of Poverty"

Source: Citic Publishing House

March 28, 2026, Portimão, Portugal, Algarve International Circuit.

In a race in the World Superbike Championship (WSBK) SSP category, a French rider, driving a Zhang Xue machine 820RR-RS, crossed the finish line with a massive advantage of 3.685 seconds.

In a top-tier event where it’s usually decided by the millisecond, such a gap means nothing short of total domination. The next day, the same bike won again, delivering a “two consecutive wins” for the round.

This is the first time a Chinese motorcycle brand has topped the charts in WSBK.

In the past, those who held this event in long-term monopoly were international giants like Ducati, Yamaha, and Kawasaki—brands with decades of technical accumulation. And what beat them was a Chinese team that had been established for less than two years, and a man from a Hunan mountain village with only a junior high school education.

The moment the champion crossed the line, the 39-year-old man squatted by the edge of the track, covered his face, and cried so hard his body shook.

He is Zhang Xue.

A poor kid who came out of a leaky earthen house in the mountains of western Hunan. He spent 20 full years, and today—stands on the top of the world.

But this is not a simple story of “a noble born from a poor family.” Zhang Xue’s life, at its core, is a process of continually breaking through the “poverty mindset trap.”

Along this path, every key choice he made clearly contrasts with the inner logic dissected in the book The Essence of Poverty—those internal mechanisms that keep the poor from ever truly turning things around.

Behind this poor kid who completed the reversal of his life, we can’t help but ask: Why can some people get out, while others just can’t?

On that rainy night, the boy made a counterintuitive choice

In 1987, Zhang Xue was born in a remote mountain village in Mayang Miao Autonomous County, Huaihua, Hunan.

His parents divorced; he lived in a leaky earthen house with his grandmother and younger sister. Even when he was young, he couldn’t fully make sense of the poverty and loneliness he was experiencing. Around age 10, he began to live independently with his sister.

At 14, he rode a motorcycle for the first time.

In that moment, he made a decision: “I know this whole life will never leave it.”

That year, he dropped out of school and became an apprentice at a repair shop. His monthly salary was only 300 yuan. He usually slept in the loft above the repair shop. Before daybreak, he would get up to open the door, take apart parts, clean, assemble… black engine oil was always embedded in the cracks of his fingernails. The cuts on his hands would heal and then reopen.

After a year and a half, he became a repair mechanic who could stand on his own; he even developed a special skill—assembling an engine from parts even with his eyes covered.

So his fellow riders gave him a nickname: “the savage”—his pure, single-minded obsession with motorcycles, like a savage.

But Zhang Xue also had a bigger dream in his heart: to become a professional racer. He saved 8,000 yuan and bought a used Honda VFR400 with 20 years of road life. Yes, the car was older than he was—everywhere you looked, there were problems.

But that was the starting point for everything.

In 2006, a turning point appeared.

That year, the Hunan Satellite TV program team came to shoot footage in western Hunan. Zhang Xue kept calling the program team, saying his riding skills were good and he wanted to get on TV to show them. He called endlessly; the program team was unable to shake him off and finally reluctantly agreed to see him once.

On the day of filming, it rained heavily. The road was muddy. Zhang Xue rode that broken motorcycle in the rain, repeatedly crashing and getting covered in mud when he fell. The program team shook their heads and prepared to wrap up and leave.

As it should, this matter ought to have ended there.

But Zhang Xue did something that nobody expected. He climbed onto that broken motorcycle and, in the cold rain, followed the program team’s vehicle—riding from Huaihua all the way to Mayang. He pursued them for more than 100 kilometers, over three hours.

In November in western Hunan, the temperature was only around ten degrees. He wore only two thin layers; his whole body was soaked and he was so cold his lips turned purple, with his hands almost unable to hold the handlebars—yet he still refused to stop.

A reporter asked him, “Is it really that important to be on TV?”

He said, “Being on TV isn’t important. What matters is that a team can see me, and let me into the team.”

The reporter asked again, “What if they still don’t want you—what would you do?”

With tears in his eyes, he said: “If you’re alone, no matter whether you fail or succeed—if you didn’t go for it when you were young, you’ll definitely regret it when you’re old. If you did it when you were young—even if it fails—you won’t regret it when you’re old.”

Luckily, after that episode aired, Zhang Xue was actually seen by a team.

This chase on that rainy night was the first moment in Zhang Xue’s life when he broke through the “poverty mindset trap.” He did an extreme “counterintuitive” thing: he poured all his resources—time, energy, and the only courage he had—into an “investment” that had no immediate return.

When everyone thought, “Forget it,” he chose to push forward one step further.

And The Essence of Poverty: Why We Can’t Get Out of Poverty, which the book’s investigation found, shows that most people who are poor are exactly the opposite.

The book includes a memorable case: in a remote mountain village in Morocco, the author met a man named Oucha Mbakk. He had nothing to eat, and the house he lived in had no usable water, with very poor sanitation conditions. But when the author walked into his room, he found a television set, a parabolic antenna, and a DVD player.

The author asked him: If a family can’t even eat enough, why buy these things?

He smiled and answered, “Oh, a TV is more important than food!”

This is not a one-off. The book also wrote about an Indonesian farmer, Pak, who was hungry year after year and physically weak, yet his home was filled with television sets, DVD players, mobile phones, as well as tea leaves, coffee, and sugar. When asked why he didn’t fill his stomach first, he replied, “I have to find myself some fun.”

Moreover, The Essence of Poverty, through massive field investigations conducted by two Nobel Prize winners, found that in situations where resources are extremely scarce, the poor often prioritize “instant gratification” rather than “long-term investment.”

These “preferences” aren’t impulsive consumption; they’re a way for them to fight off frustration in a boring, monotonous life. But it’s precisely this priority for “instant gratification” that traps them in “consumption squeeze”—the money that should have been used to invest in the future (skill learning, health maintenance, children’s education) is instead consumed right now.

Zhang Xue’s choice was the opposite of this rule.

When he had only 300 yuan left in his pocket, he spent 260 yuan on buying things for his grandmother, and the rest of the money was poured entirely into learning to drive. He didn’t spend money on immediate pleasures. He didn’t buy better clothes or go out for food, drinks, or fun. Instead, he directed all his resources into a seemingly unreachable dream.

He didn’t lack the impulse to seek instant satisfaction; he simply understood more clearly what he truly wanted.

Behind this, we see that one key to escaping poverty is this: restrain the impulse toward instant gratification, and spend money and energy on things that can actually make you better.

God shut one door, and he opened another window

After joining a racing team, Zhang Xue discovered he quickly hit a wall.

As a professional racer, his old injuries gradually came to light, and his talent wasn’t enough to carry him to the peak of this sport. Injuries, funding, fierce competition… all became obstacles he couldn’t get around.

His dream as a racer was shattered.

But he didn’t give up completely the way most people would after hitting a wall in one road, nor did he fall into self-pity. He quickly found another way:

“If I can’t ride the fastest bike, then I’ll build the fastest one.”

This was his second crucial decision to break through the “thinking trap.”

In 2013, the 26-year-old Zhang Xue set out again. Carrying only 20k yuan in savings, he went alone to Chongqing—often called the “motorcycle capital.”

With no connections and no money, he ran from supplier to supplier, one after another. When he didn’t have enough money, he still relied on his wife to borrow from her in-laws…

And his way to start was simple to the point of being almost crude: he first built custom motorcycles, posted listings on forums to sell them, and built up word-of-mouth little by little through solid technical skills.

In 2017, Zhang Xue co-founded Kayo Motorcycle with partners.

His first model, the 500X, opened the market fast with lightweight design and strong power. In the first year, he sold 800 units; in the second year, 3,000 units. Later, annual sales broke 30k units, and revenue reached hundreds of millions of yuan.

In 2023, he led the Kayo racing team to participate in the Dakar Rally and became the first Chinese motorcycle team in history to finish.

However, just when Kayo was at its peak, the conflict between Zhang Xue and the investors erupted.

Zhang Xue insisted: the money earned must continue to be invested in independent R&D—especially the engine. He didn’t want to be an “assembly plant” forever, and he didn’t want to be forever choked by foreign brands. But the investors’ logic was: once you make money, you should expand production and pursue return first.

In 2024, Zhang Xue made a shocking decision: he gave up all equity and walked away “empty-handed.”

On the day he resigned, he climbed onto his self-built 450RR, took one last look at the office building in a drizzle, and posted on his朋友圈: “If nobody loves themselves, how can there be love for others or for the world!”

At the time, the industry was full of pessimism: “Once he leaves Kayo, he’s nothing.” “Want to run WSBK? Dream on.”…

He didn’t argue.

One month later, Zhang Xue registered a new company under his own name; his personal stake exceeded 73%. He said: “Having your name engraved on the bike is putting your life on the line. If you can’t do it well, this life will end with the operation shut down.”

This is exactly a key to breaking through the “poverty trap”: not being hijacked by short-term gains and losses, and being willing to give up current vested interests for long-term goals.

In The Essence of Poverty, it also dissects a sorrowful pattern behind poverty:

When faced with setbacks, people who are poor are more likely to fall into “cognitive burden,” because survival pressure over the long term consumes mental resources—leading to self-doubt, and a loss of motivation and energy to change. Instead of changing their circumstances by improving their abilities, they enhance their ability to endure by lowering standards.

But Zhang Xue’s choice was exactly the opposite. He didn’t lower his standards; he raised them even higher. When the path of “riding the fastest” didn’t work, he didn’t say “forget it.” He said, “Then I’ll build the fastest one.” When investors wanted to make quick money, he didn’t compromise; he chose to give up everything and start over from scratch.

From the shattering of his rider dream to the transition to building bikes; from being kicked out of the company he founded to resigning and restarting from nothing—at every fork in fate, Zhang Xue made a counterintuitive choice: when a specific dream was smashed by reality, he didn’t stand still. He quickly found a new exit—building a bike that would let others ride at the very front.

He turned every “failure” into a stepping stone for the next assault.

With more than $20k in assets, he still uses that cracked-screen old phone

The hardships of entrepreneurship go far beyond what outsiders can imagine.

At the hardest time, Zhang Xue and his wife couldn’t scrape together 20 yuan to buy dinner. Later, his wife posted the account book from back then on social platforms. The two recorded, item by item, every last yuan they borrowed from relatives and friends, crossing off each debt as they repaid it. They’d been married for 15 years, and they repaid debts for 11 of them.

In 2025, Zhang Xue Motorcycles’ total annual output value was 750 million yuan, with R&D investment as high as 69.58 million yuan. In the same period, the company posted a loss of 22.78 million yuan.

This means that even under business pressure and with survival still challenging, Zhang Xue still poured a large amount of funds into independent R&D.

His personal life, in contrast to his business achievements, created a huge disparity.

After becoming worth over 30k, Zhang Xue still uses an old Huawei phone costing more than 2,000 yuan; the screen is still cracked. When dealing with customers in his daily life, he uses an ordinary van.

After becoming famous, someone wanted to give him a long-wheelbase Rolls-Royce worth 13 million yuan. His response was: “If someone really gives it, he will recruit a used-car dealer nearby to come and buy it back at a discount of 20%, and then donate the money to a charity. He’ll still use a van to receive customers.”

The only “face” he cares about is whether Chinese people’s own motorcycles can win in a proper, above-board way on the world stage.

Beyond that, he is immune to all vanity.

This “thrift” isn’t intentional self-restraint; it’s a natural reflection of how he prioritizes value inside his heart. In his world, only two things are worth giving everything to: his love for motorcycles, and his obsession with “building the fastest bike.” Everything else doesn’t matter.

Indeed, The Essence of Poverty also says that the reason people who are poor find it hard to escape poverty is often not because they lack ability, but because under conditions of scarce resources they are more likely to make short-sighted choices—spending money on things that look “respectable” (like an extravagant wedding), rather than spending it on things that can change the future (like fertilizer, education).

The book gives another heartbreaking case: an Indian mother starts saving money 10 years or even longer in advance to prepare a dowry for her 8-year-old daughter; in South Africa, a family funeral can cost up to 40% of the family’s annual income. If this money were used to invest—buy seeds, enroll in training classes, open a small shop—it could completely change the entire household’s trajectory. But it gets swallowed by “ceremonial feelings” and “face.”

And Zhang Xue, who grew up poor, broke the habit of falling into poverty. He doesn’t lack reasons to spend money—when someone with over 43.5k in assets buys a luxury car or switches to a new phone, who would think it was too much? But he doesn’t need those things to prove himself.

This is also the third key to escaping poverty: distinguishing what is truly important from what is just vanity. Put money and energy into things that create long-term value, rather than consuming them on meaningless ceremony and external recognition.

In 2026, after winning the championship, Zhang Xue Motorcycles completely exploded in orders. The retail price of the winning model, the 820RR civilian version, is only 43.5k yuan—about one-third of the price of imported cars in the same segment. Within 100 hours of pre-sales opening, orders exceeded 5,500 units. In the terminal market, the delivery schedule for some models has already been set for June to July.

Even more unexpectedly, after orders were fully booked, Zhang Xue made a decision that drove all sales managers crazy: anyone with a motorcycle driving/ownership age of less than one year is banned from purchasing the 820RR.

He said: “I want fewer people to die. I don’t need this 10% sales volume; the company won’t die.”

This move was publicly praised by the Ministry of Public Security’s traffic management bureau: “True love isn’t indulgence—it’s knowing boundaries. Speed can make people hot-blooded, but only responsibility can let love go further.”

“One life, one thing—go all in to the end”

“One life, one thing—go all in to the end”—this isn’t just a slogan; it is a true reflection of Zhang Xue’s 20 years of life.

From entering a repair shop as an apprentice at 14 to standing on the WSBK champion podium at 39, the theme of Zhang Xue’s life has only one thing: motorcycles.

After winning the championship, a reporter asked him the secret to his success. He said, “Doing one thing isn’t about chasing results—it’s because of love. And maybe the results really will be different.”

Someone asked him why he could make the bikes so well. He said: “As long as you truly like it, truly want to do it, and are willing to put in the work—how could you not make it? If you don’t know, you can go learn. Connections can be built slowly too. The key is whether you’re willing to do it.”

He said he isn’t a “gifted” type of contestant; the key is the “go all in” spirit—constantly pushing against himself, and he must move toward the goal.

So what is the result of this “go all in”?

The 820RR-RS race bike, equipped with Zhang Xue’s independently developed 819cc three-cylinder engine, has a domestic sourcing rate of over 90% for core components. In WSBK, a race track known as the “ultimate testing stone for mass-production bike performance,” Zhang Xue Motorcycles defeated international giants like Ducati, Yamaha, and Kawasaki, which have accumulated decades or even a hundred years of technology.

From 14th place in his debut at the Australian round to double champion at the Portugal round—only one month separated them. The team completed 12 core technology upgrades in 30 days. That is the power of “going all in.”

After winning the championship, Zhang Xue said: “Within the next five years, we will eat up more than 50% of the market share of international big-name brands.”

This isn’t arrogance. It’s the certainty of someone who took 20 years, walking from a repair shop to the top of the world, about the career he loves.

Interestingly, in The Essence of Poverty, the two Nobel Prize winners also raise a thought-provoking question:

Why, even when poor people know that fertilizer can increase yields, don’t they often buy it when they have money? Why do only 25% of farmers in Kenya use fertilizer each year—when they clearly know it’s an effective way to help them escape poverty?

The answer is: long-term poverty erodes a person’s ability to think long-term.

When you worry about your next meal every day, you simply don’t have extra mental bandwidth to think about whether to buy fertilizer next year. Your brain is filled with survival pressure right in front of you, leaving no space to make long-range plans.

What this reflects is that poverty is not just a lack of material resources; it’s also a limitation of the way people think. It makes you short-sighted—able to see only the next few days of life, but not the life that will be there three to five years from now.

Zhang Xue’s story provides exactly the opposite kind of evidence for this rule. If a poor kid from the mountains can still maintain “long-term thinking” under extremely scarce conditions—spending money on learning technology, spending time developing and refining the engine, and focusing all energy on a far-reaching goal—then he has a chance to escape this vicious circle.

Zhang Xue wasn’t dragged down by the inertia of poverty; instead, he created an “upward acceleration.” This isn’t luck’s favor. It is the victory of “long-term thinking” over “cognitive burden.”

He used 20 years, step by step, from a repair shop to the top of the world.

Epilogue

Zhang Xue’s story is a story about love, a story about going all in, and a story about “how far one person can actually go.”

But first and foremost, it’s a story about “how to get out of poverty.”

From a leaky earthen house to the podium of a world champion; from a repair shop apprentice making 300 yuan a month to an entrepreneur valued at 1 billion—through every step of his 20 years, Zhang Xue answers the question that troubles countless people:

As a poor kid, why could he reverse his fate against all odds?

The answer is written in every detail: the stubbornness of chasing cars for more than 100 kilometers on a rainy night at age 19; the pragmatism of starting from a repair shop at age 20; the courage of carrying 20k yuan to Chongqing from scratch at age 26; the decisive gamble at age 37 to give up everything and engrave his name on the bike; and even today, his extreme self-discipline of using a cracked-screen phone and rejecting the temptation of luxury cars…

And behind all of this is a deeper logic that can explain why some people can get out and others can’t—this logic is written in The Essence of Poverty.

This book is co-authored by two Nobel Prize winners in Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, based on 15 years of real-world investigations into poverty populations across five continents and a large number of randomized controlled trials.

Using accessible language and vivid cases, it dissects the thinking traps that keep us unable to escape poverty—consumption squeeze, cognitive burden, information scarcity, social pressure—like an invisible net, firmly trapping countless people in place.

After reading Zhang Xue’s story, you’ll feel fired up. You’ll think: if he can do it, why can’t I?

The Essence of Poverty may be exactly what helps you see the “manuals” of those “poverty traps” clearly:

It helps you understand why poor people make choices that seem “irrational”; why simple cash assistance often can’t truly help people escape poverty; and how, using scientific methods, step by step you can break out of the vicious circle of poverty and break through that unseen wall.

《The Essence of Poverty: Why We Can’t Get Out of Poverty》

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / by

Citic Publishing Group