Citing unidentified sources close to the matter, investors in Uber China will receive a 20 percent share in the new company. In return, Didi Chuxing is said to be making a $1 billion investment in Uber China at a $65 billion evaluation. Uber will operate its own app and services for the immediate future after the rumored deal. Both Uber and Didi Chuxing have not made any comment.

Last week, the Chinese government ended two years of legal uncertainty by finally legalizing ride-sharing in China. Cities have been told to “encourage, support and guide” the industry by central authorities.

In its report, Bloomberg also published a blog post written by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

“As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that being successful is about listening to your head as well as following your heart,” said Kalanick. “Uber and Didi Chuxing are investing billions of dollars in China and both companies have yet to turn a profit there. Getting to profitability is the only way to build a sustainable business that can best serve Chinese riders, drivers and cities over the long term.”

Uber has admitted to falling $1 billion in debt to support its China operations, while Didi Chuxing has raised $7.3 billion from investors over the last year.

The post Uber Leaves China After Selling to Didi Chuxing appeared first on The Nanfang.

The cabinet issued broad guidelines for ride sharing companies regarding registration, fares, employment of drivers and payments. Cities are left to implement specific measures of their own, but have been told to “encourage, support and guide” the industry.

Ride-sharing services in China have seen plenty of controversy in their short history.

Last summer, government officials raided Uber offices in Chengdu and Guangzhou. Taxi drivers often enact reprisals against ride sharing drivers, and a number of violent crimes have been associated with Chinese ride sharing services.

The leading ride sharing companies, Uber and Didi Chuxing, welcomed the announcement.

“The rules legalized online car-booking services at the national level for the first time, marking a milestone in China’s endeavor toward steady and healthy development of the ride-share industry,” a representative of Didi Chuxing said in a statement. “We believe the rules will usher in a new stage of growth for China’s online ride-booking ecosystem.”

Uber was similarly receptive of the news. “We look forward to working with national and local governments to put these regulatory guidelines into practice,” said a company statement.

Both companies are going to extraordinary measures to dominate the Chinese market.

Although Uber has admitted to running a yearly deficit of $1 billion in order to stay competitive in China, it plans to expand from 40 to 100 cities by the end of this year.

In June, Didi Chuxing raised $7.3 billion from investors for what it described as one of the world’s largest private equity funding rounds.

The post It’s Now Official: Uber Can Legally Operate in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

The decision to maintain a driver blacklist was reached in collaboration with China’s top car-sharing company, Didi Chuxing, and the Share Economy Committee of the Internet Society of China.

According to China Daily, there are several databases in China, including a national crime database, an escaped criminal database, a drug suspect database, a public security traffic management platform, and a mentally ill patient information system. If an applicant’s name shows up on any of these systems, the applicant will be blacklisted from working as a ride-share driver.

Ride-shares in China have been plagued by news of brutal crimes where hired drivers victimize their passengers.

This past May, a driver working for Didi Chuxing confessed to killing a Shenzhen woman who had hailed him for a ride. The same month, another Didi Chuxing driver in Tianjin was arrested by police after a female passenger complained he had picked her up in his car without wearing any pants. Last August, an Uber driver was arrested for molesting and robbing a female passenger.

The post China To Ban Criminals And The Mentally Ill From Working As Ride Share Drivers appeared first on The Nanfang.

“We’re profitable in the USA, but we’re losing over $1 billion a year in China,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told Betakit, a Canadian technology platform. “We have a fierce competitor that’s unprofitable in every city they exist in, but they’re buying up market share. I wish the world wasn’t that way,” he added.

After its most recent round of fundraising, Uber raised its valuation to $8 billion, yet still remains unprofitable in the Chinese market. Despite the China losses, Uber argues it’s still better off than Didi Kuaiche, who is spending “many multiples” more in order to control its market share.

In an interview with Reuters, a spokesperson for Didi Kuaiche refuted Uber’s claim, saying the company has achieved profitability in many of the 400 Chinese cities it operates in.

Besides the massive financial hit, last year was a tumultuous one for Uber as it faced obstacle after obstacle. It had its WeChat accounts suspended last December by TenCent, a major backer of Didi Kuaiche. Last year also saw a number of scams, and scandals involving Uber drivers committing crimes and assaults by bitter taxi drivers. The company also hade its Guangzhou and Chengdu offices raided by government officials last May.

Uber previously announced a massive expansion that will see its operations grow from 40 to 100 Chinese cities by the end of the year.

The post Uber Loses $1 Billion a Year in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

China’s leading mobile messaging app blocked the accounts only days after announcing a global partnership between Uber’s main competitor, Didi Kuaidi, and Lyft, GrabTaxi, and Ola. Interestingly, one of Didi Kuaidi’s main investors is Tencent, WeChat’s parent company.

Tencent has yet to comment on the connection between WeChat and Didi Kuaidi. Rather, the company claims the Uber accounts were closed due to a violation of WeChat’s rules and regulations, alleging the company was collecting private user data.

On Monday, Tencent released a statement claiming 168 Uber accounts were shut down. As Tech in Asia points out, some of the Uber accounts which were shut down appear to be fake, however a number of legitimate accounts were also removed. Tencent also said 136 Didi Kuaidi accounts were shut down in the purge, yet it’s unclear if only fake accounts were removed as a number of legitimate accounts are still in operation.

Uber disputes WeChat’s claim that it hadn’t registered the proper credentials on its accounts, going so far as to publicly release its ICP licensing serial number, B2-20150033, which the company claims was approved by WeChat on August 6 this year.

Despite the back and forth between the companies, it’s important to note that Uber’s accounts on WeChat have not been banned but “blocked”, and may therefore be reinstated in the future. Until then, Uber’s future in China is looking more and more uncertain.

The post WeChat Shuts Down Uber Accounts as Ride-Sharing War Heats Up in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

At the forefront of Uber’s strategy are plans to fully localize the US-based tech company into the Chinese market with support from Chinese investors and offer products geared towards local residents, all while being led by a local management team.

“Uber is fully localized in China. Since other Chinese Internet companies also receive overseas investment, we are no different from them in capital levels,” said Liu Zhen, the executive currently in charge of Uber’s China operations as its “strategic officer” (pictured).

In October, Uber China registered as a new company in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and set up a $1 billion investment plan as a way to distinguish itself as an independent entity from its parent company.

Uber has aggressive plans for expansion next year by increasing its presence from 21 cities to 100, as compared to the 199 currently offered by competitor Didi Kuaidi who controls 80 percent of the market share. Liu said the company is considering expanding to Chinese cities with populations over 2 million, of which China has 250.

The past year has also seen marked growth for the ride-sharing service, with its market share in chauffeur services growing from 2 to 35 percent over the past nine months. In September, the company launched UberCommute, the first such service offered by Uber throughout the world, while this past Wednesday saw the launch of UberPool.

Liu said that Uber plans to both reveal the names of its investors as well as the CEO charged with running the Chinese subsidiary, but did not say when the announcements will be made.

As part of their plans for expansion, Liu said Uber will eventually perform more daily trips in China than in the United States. At the present, the city with the most daily Uber trips in the world is Guangzhou, while other Chinese cities in the top ten include Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Shenzhen.

Although it is maintains a strong presence worldwide, Uber faces tough competition from Didi Kuaidi, a conglomeration that merged earlier this year and has financial backing from internet giants Alibaba and Tencent.

Uber‘s China expansion has been met with opposition before. Last May, Uber’s offices in Guangzhou and Chengdu were raided by government officials. In June, Sichuan taxi drivers reportedly carried out a retaliatory attack, while a public outcry was raised against drivers employed by Uber who molested passengers and charged for non-existent riders.

Despite the friction, Liu emphasized that Uber has always sought cooperation with authorities, saying that the outside world has a lot of misunderstandings of the relationship between Uber and the Chinese government.

“Uber China has maintained smooth communications with Chinese governments at all levels,” said Liu.

Some of these growing pains could be due to a “grey-zone” inhabited by such ride-sharing services due to a lack of government regulation, something to which Liu is “looking forward to”. As Liu said last August in regards to policies governing this new industry:

The government needs to announce a clear policy as soon as possible to erase the uncertainty in the market… We have been fumbling in the dark. With the rules, we have something to follow.

However, the hands-on approach Uber craves with Chinese authorities is not the method by which it treats its own business model, instead preferring a “hands-off” approach. Said Liu:

I grant maximum autonomy on operation [to the managers]. Some 80 percent of the decisions are made by local managers, including those on subsidies, prices and marketing activities.

We, at Uber China’s headquarters, are like strategic investors, responsible for providing basic infrastructure and facilities for them to better service their cities.

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In a statement, Uber said it suspected Wang of fraud because he had logged so many more work hours than his peers. “The accounts were registered … with fake information, and the records of the trips from those accounts looked dubious,” said Uber.

Wang has yet to be formally charged by police.

This past June, a report by Tencent (a financial backer of Uber’s competitor, Didi Kuaidi) suggested that millions of booked Uber rides were faked by its drivers in order to qualify for subsidies.

Tech in Asia made the argument that this type of fraudulent behavior may have been beneficial to Uber (at the time):

On the one hand, it is essentially being stolen by “drivers” who aren’t actually taking passengers anywhere. But on the other hand, the increased rides count that all of these fake drivers provide helps bolster Uber’s China stats when it’s looking for investment – like it is right now.

The post Uber Driver in Shanghai Arrested for Earning Money on Non-Existent Passengers appeared first on The Nanfang.

1. Although it doesn’t show the area, the map has labels implying that indisputably Chinese land on the border between Nepal and Pakistan could conceivably be Indian.

2. It shows the part of South Tibet cruelly stolen by British imperialists and now named ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ by India in the same colour as India and with a hatched effect, suggesting it is in some way not a full part of the glorious motherland.

3. It calls the Xisha islands, which have been integral and greatly cherished Chinese possessions for millennia, the ‘Paracels’, suggesting their ownership is not beyond doubt, and omits the rest of the South China Sea, down to the shores of the Philippines, Borneo and Vietnam, which is all unquestionably Chinese territory.

4. (or probably 6. or 7. by now) Perhaps most staggeringly of all, the map uses the hatched effect for Taiwan, as if the island province is somehow of a different status from the rest of the country. It also leaves the Diaoyu Islands unnamed, as if it were another country’s territory, which of course it is not.

And this guy wonders why Hong Kong’s patriotic Chief Executive CY Leung orders his valiant police to kick Uber’s door in and drag the interns off to the dungeons.

And why is the South China Morning Post putting this disgraceful insult to the nation’s territorial integrity on its front page? Next thing, they’ll be publishing fellow race-traitor Minxin Pei’s musings on the fate of the ‘predatory state’.

The post Uber Backs Splittists, Denies Chinese History appeared first on The Nanfang.

“When we started this year, we had about one percent market share. Today, nine months later, we’re looking at about 30 to 35 percent market share,” Kalanick said.

Kalanick spoke of the importance of Uber’s relationship with Baidu: “We can get introductions to the city governments, the government officials that want to shepherd our kind of innovation and our kind of progress into their cities,” said Kalanick.

Kalanick also praised China’s harmony and prosperity: “Progress is something we see the government be incredibly open to, whether it be about more jobs and less pollution, less congestion on the streets, better utilization of infrastructure, that kind of progress always has to be in harmony with stability and that is one of the big things that we partnered with the government on,” said Kalanick.

Uber has had a bit of a rough go during its first year of operations in China. Earlier this year, Uber’s Guanghou and Chengdu offices were raided by government officials within a week of each other. Only last month, a Chengdu woman accused an Uber driver of robbing and sexually molesting her.

Finally, and although Uber was not specifically identified, ride-sharing services were blamed for causing last month’s traffic gridlock in Beijing, reported China Daily. “E-hailing services have changed passenger habits on commuting and travel, and the frequent use of private vehicles has put more pressure on rush-hour traffic,” said Wang Yujing, a data analyst at AutoNavi.

The post Uber Announces Massive Expansion in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

An unnamed 42 year-old woman in Chengdu, Sichuan used Uber to call for a ride at around 2am two weeks ago. After picking her up, the driver stopped midway through a tunnel and robbed her of RMB 5,000. He then drove to the outskirts of the city where he molested her, took pictures, and threatened to release them if she went to police.

The victim waited two weeks, and then finally reported the incident to police on August 9. Two days later, a suspect was charged with robbery and “forcible molestation of a woman.” Uber representatives are described in reports as not providing any comment, and have not confirmed that the arrested suspect is an Uber driver.

This past June, another Uber driver was implicated in a sexual assault on a drunk female passenger.

Uber’s expansion in China has faced opposition from government regulatory agencies and local taxi drivers in addition to a poor public image from reported incidents such as these assaults. Uber’s Chinese offices in Guangzhou and Chengdu were raided by police a week apart last May, while unsubstantiated reports say Chengdu taxi drivers targeted a Uber driver in a vicious retaliatory assault.

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