Update | China’s ride-hailing king channels Genghis Khan in preparation for a new price war
Meituan-Dianping announced plans to open ride-hailing services in seven cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Xiamen, heralding a price competition not seen since the exit of Didi’s biggest rival Uber
The man who battled Travis Kalanick to a standstill and forced Uber Technologies to pull out of China is unperturbed by talk of a challenger to his ride-hailing throne.
“If you want war, you will get war,” Cheng Wei, the co-founder and chief executive of Didi Chuxing, the world’s biggest ride-hailing company, said in a recent interview with Caijing Magazine.
Cheng, 34, was quoting 12th-century Mongolian warrior-ruler Genghis Khan, whose empire spanned Asia to the Adriatic Sea, in response to a question about competition from Meituan-Dianping, which has advertised its plans to expand into the ride-hailing industry in several Chinese cities with offers of steep discounts to consumers and rebates to drivers.
