The times, they are a-changin’, and so are the motorcycle manufacturing arrangements of Asia. Last week, news came out that Yamaha has a new partnership in place with CFMoto. The result is, the Chinese brand will now be manufacturing motorcycles in partnership with the Japanese moto industry giant.

This may come as a surprise to some motorcyclists, and not much of a shocker to others. CFMoto currently has a partnership with KTM, making bikes for the Austrian-based conglomerate (the current 790-series Adventure and Duke models are both made by CFMoto in China). Before that, CFMoto gained a reputation for making sturdy middleweight motorcycles with engines that looked a lot like Kawasaki’s 650 parallel twin, at a time when most of China’s moto industry was still building 200-250cc machines. Some people assumed there was a partnership between Kawi and CFMoto at that point, but if that’s the case, it certainly wasn’t widely publicized.

Yamaha, on the other hand, had an partnership in China already, but it’s decided to change things up and hitch its wagon to CFMoto. As per Yamaha’s press release:

The name of the new business will be ZHUZHOU CF YAMAHA MOTOR CO., LTD. (ZCYM). This joint venture is premised on the acquisition of the clearances, permits, etc., required by competition laws and other laws and regulations.

Yamaha Motor has positioned China as one of its important production and sales bases and will continue to discuss the direction of the joint venture with CFMOTO going forward with the aim of further raising competitiveness.

As you can see below, Yamaha is actually a minority partner in the new company, holding about 44 percent of the equity. CFMoto holds 50 percent, and Tair Yea Limited holds about 6 percent.

Note the timeline above, published by Yamaha. And also note the numbers in the workforce for the new company. ZCYM appears to be planning to hit the ground running. Presumably, the focus will be on smaller bikes for developing markets, but who knows? CFMoto is already long past that point.