Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[Chris:] Hey Felicia, you wanna call an Uber?
[Felicia:] What about a Didi Kuaidi?
[Chris:] I have no idea what you just said!
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored, I’m your host Chris Chappell.
There’s a war going on in the streets of China and every day that war is costing millions of lives.
Reasonable fair for peer to peer public transportation.
You see. In big cities in China there's a shortage of licensed taxis.
Enter Uber.
If somehow you're unfamiliar with Uber, it is an American transportation company
that lets you use your smartphone to order a car to pick you up like a taxi on demand.
Uber already offered services in more than 50 countries and now they wanna take China for a ride.
The problem is China wants to take them for a ride.
It’s understandable that Uber covets China as a land of opportunity.
After all, China has at least 140 cities with more than a million residents.
All of whom presumably would want to use Uber.
But it seems Uber forgot that China is also the land of the... PolyStation.
Enter Didi Kuaidi,
a China's homegrown version of Uber and it's clearly taking pages from the Uber playbook.
For example, when Uber created a car pooling service, Didi Kuaidi create one, too.
And when Uber made a strong showing in the premium car service market, Didi Kuaidi jumped into that as well.
And now Didi Kuaidi seems to actually be out-ubering Uber.
According to this article, Didi Kuaidi CEO said it controls 80% of the Chinese market.
And while Uber CEO may disagree saying Uber controls 50%,
at least it seems Didi Kuaidi is bigger than Uber.
And both companies have big Chinese investors.
Uber is backed by Chinese search engine giant, Baidu.
Didi Kuaidi is backed by Alibaba, the Chinese eBay
and having powerful investors is really important in China.
Especially when your entire business model can be arbitrarily declared illegal
like what happened at the beginning of the year in Beijing
or when police in Guangzhou raided your office like what happened in April.
But you know there's a common Chinese saying,
[Chinese speaking]
Oh! What's that Shelley?
Oh, okay!
I'm being told no Chinese people ever say that.
Anyway in China something can be illegal but still in common practice.
For example, bribery, or intellectual property theft, or Uber.
And that’s especially the case when Communist Party officials need you.
Since July 2014 Chinese leader Xi Jinping
demanded that officials stopped driving around in their private car fleets paid forward public funds.
You know because it was too ostentatious that made official gas corrupt.
But obviously it would be unfair to ask Party officials to ride the bus, or take the subway, or drive a non-luxury car.
That’s for little people.
So now many of them just take an Uber, or Didi Kuaidi.
And Party officials’ resistance to giving up luxury is actually what protects Uber and its biggest competitor.
So what do you think is in store for Uber in China?
Leave your comments below and be sure to subscribe to China Uncensored and check out our Facebook page.
Once again I'm Chris Chappell, see you next time.