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Uber and Didi Face Regulatory Challenges Throughout China (yahoo.com)
hackingbear writes: Contrary to the central government's wish to boost employment from peer-to-peer economy, the Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing, who have invested big interest in traditional taxi services, are all looking to pass municipal regulations on ride-hailing businesses that could wipe out many of Uber and Didi's drivers and cars. "There will be a sharp drop in market supply of rideshare vehicles. In Shanghai, for instance, less than 20 percent of existing rideshare vehicles meet the proposed (wide) wheelbase requirements. There will be significant decrease in the number of rideshare drivers. Of over 410,000 activated driver accounts in Shanghai, only less than 10,000 are residents with Shanghai residency registration," said Didi on its social media outlets. In China, ridesharing drivers are usually migrant workers who have few other choices of employments, and rich urban residents are not interested in such jobs. Given the sore state of the economy in China, high unemployment would mean social unrest; the ridesharing economy may prevail at the end as it has become too big to be strictly regulated. Separately, the Chinese government opened an antitrust probe into Uber's sale of its China operations to Didi in September after the announcement of the merger.
China wants every corporation to be owned by locals, no? Or is stuff changing?
the ridesharing economy may prevail at the end as it has become too big to be strictly regulated.
Sounds like somebody should visit some foreign countries during their next Spring Break. Just..watch out for those hotels in the countryside, where you can meet nice girls in a beautiful settings.
It is about time to ensure that Chinese companies meet 'regulatory challenges' at every turn here in the west. I'm getting pretty tired of how things like freedom of trade, judicial impartiality and IP protection seems to work only one way where the Chinese are concerned.
I've used Uber in a handful of developing countries including India and China. It's very convenient to be able to set your ride destination without having to speak with the driver, and it's nice to confirm that they took the proper route. However, twice in India I got drivers that were on meth or some similar drug. In India (not sure about China) some people will buy a small fleet of cars and rent them out to drivers to drive for Uber. Uber already doesn't pay well and since these drivers are losing a cut to the car owner they have to drive long hours and so they take stimulants. This is no different than some of the 3-wheel taxi drivers who also take stimulants. Even if you give the driver a low rating the car owner will just rent the car out to another driver.
Sounds like china could use another Wall. They've got an immigrant problem too.
Why do people keep calling Uber and similar services a "ride sharing" service? Nobody is sharing anything. Uber gets the profits, drivers get shafted and users pay for their rides (dearly sometimes with their "surge pricing" schemes). What exactly is being shared here?
Is this the same company?
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/11/apple-didi-chuxing-board-seat/
Let me get this straight. Governments tell us protectionism is bad unless they have a direct interest in it.
Hmmm.
This "article" is a shameless corporate PR piece written for Didi. It quotes Didi's claims as fact, and hype it up even further.
Here is the first cognitive dissonance: If it is "ride sharing", then by definition the drivers aren't doing it as their job. If you are talking about employment, then you have to drop the farce about "ride sharing" first.
And the claim that residency permit would lead to insufficient drivers is completely dubious: The taxi drivers in the big Chinese cities are already required to have local residency, and the reason there are not enough of them is not because it pays too little, but because the taxi companies take a huge cut in their profit, leaving them too little for themselves. Now, before the Didi-Uber merger announcement, the Chinese "ride sharing" companies were handing out huge subsidies to both the drivers and the customers to fiercely compete for marketshare. The very day after the merger announcement, all that was gone, and now the cut Didi and Uber China takes from the drivers are even higher than the taxi companies! It's shameful, and even more so when the corporate PR tries to pin the problem of their own greed on the regulators.
Cities like Beijing and Shanghai are big metropolis, and like others in the world, have people of all classes, including many poorer people with local residency, especially those from outer districts of the cities, who have traditionally been the major sources of taxi drivers. "No urbanites want the job" is a lie, the truth is that the new "ride sharing" companies are doing the opposite of their claimed "people's empowerment" and trying to out-exploit their employees than their traditional rivals of the taxi industry. Of course they don't like the regulators to get in their way.
The Chinese are smart enough to realize that these businesses will just feed off their economy and drain it if they are not kept in check.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.