Chinese Regulators Hold Talks With 11 Ride-Hailing Firms Including Didi and AutoNavi

On August 22, China’s Ministry of Transport conducted interviews with 11 ride-hailing service platforms including Didi, T3 Travel, AutoNavi, Caocao Mobility, and Meituan Taxi.

According to the regulatory authorities, after analyzing industry reports, it was found that some companies had shown problems such as inadequate implementation of corporate responsibility, infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of employees and passengers, other illegal operations, and potential safety and stability risks. Therefore, the authorities put forward four requirements for the summoned platforms.

The regulators said enterprises should thoroughly investigate and rectify potential stability risks to ensure the stability of the industry. Secondly, they should improve the openness and transparency of business strategies, improve the customer service system, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of employees and consumers.

Third, ride-hailing platforms should operate strictly and legally, and repel non-compliant vehicles and personnel. Those platforms that provide aggregated ride-hailing services should ensure that they comply with relevant regulations, urging accessed online car-hailing companies to strengthen vehicle and personnel management. In case of safety incidents, these platforms shall fulfill their responsibility of paying compensation in advance according to law, and do a good job in handling the situation together with the involved online car-hailing company.

SEE ALSO: Affected By Pandemic, Ride-Hailing Orders in China Fell 29% YoY in March

Finally, regulators said that enterprises should enhance safety production, improve the emergency response mechanism of safety accidents, and strengthen driver management and education and training.

In this regard, all interviewed platforms said that they will conduct a comprehensive and systematic review of the business behavior according to the requirements, conscientiously fulfill the main responsibility of the enterprise, and maintain the safety and stability of the industry.

It is worth mentioning that, according to data released by China’s official online car-hailing supervision information interaction platform on August 16, 695 million orders were received in July, of which 153 million orders were completed by aggregation platforms, accounting for 22%. This is the first time that the regulatory platform has published relevant data on the aggregation platform since it began to publish data on the online car-hailing industry in 2020.