How tightly should China regulate tech innovation without strangling engine for economic growth?
- China’s authorities have stepped in to overhaul safety practices in the ride-hailing industry after allowing the companies to police themselves
Smog and jobs helped buy Didi Chuxing and its one-time competitor now shareholder Uber Technologies room to become so big and integral to daily life in China that legitimising the practice of private car-sharing became a mere formality in late 2016. By then, the government had another argument to justify the legalisation: it wanted to develop a sharing economy.
Fast-forward to 2018 and the sharing economy is under siege. Didi, the market leader in ride-hailing in China, has a full-blown safety crisis of its own making after two young female passengers died while using a hitch-riding service that it had marketed as a way to meet people.
A review of public court records revealed a string of sexual assault cases involving drivers for Didi attacking female passengers. Didi’s founder Cheng Wei and president Jean Liu have apologised in the wake of the scandal, saying that “vanity” and “breathless expansion” had caused the Beijing-based start-up to lose sight of its original mission to build a better world of mobility.