Need a bike, ball or brolly? In China, there are sharing apps for these and more

Shanghai

BASKETBALLS, electric scooters and rainbow-coloured umbrellas - nothing seems out of bounds in China's booming "sharing economy".

Where once Chinese consumers would look to shell out on items such as luxury handbags or cars, now they can rent them for short periods taking advantage of the explosion of mobile payment technology.

As ever with China, the numbers are mind-boggling: The shared economy more than doubled to 3.45 trillion yuan (S$702 billion) last year from a year earlier, according to official figures which projected average annual growth of 40 per cent in the years ahead.

But specialists warn that China, w…