Public transportation companies are becoming a new target of Chinese regulators

The Chinese market regulator has extended its control of the country’s technology companies to the attractions sector, warning executives of Didi Chuxing and nine other companies against pricing and data monopolism.

On Friday, executives from ten companies managing delivery and freight delivery platforms were convened for a meeting with eight government departments, including the State Market Regulation Administration, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Public Security, according to the state. directs China Transport News.

Mobile platforms were told to address a number of issues, including excessively high costs for drivers, opaque profit-sharing mechanisms and arbitrary price changes. Merchandise platforms were reported to monopolize transportation data, force industry prices, and randomly charge additional membership fees.

The call is part of an evolution of Chinese regulators’ campaign to reign in their Internet giants and enforce new rules to break monopolies and ensure the protection of user data, according to Will Tao, an independent technology analyst .

The campaign, which changed speed after regulators unexpectedly canceled Ant Group’s box office offering, has pitted the country’s Internet entrepreneurs against the Chinese Communist Party’s desire to control the market and reduce practices. anticompetitive.

Alongside Didi, the SoftBank-supported platform that has dominated ride-hailing in China since Uber hit the market in 2016, were its smaller local rivals Meituan Chuxing, of e-commerce group Meituan, and Cao Cao Mobility, the ride-hailing arm of the private Chinese. Geely car manufacturer. Full Truck Alliance and Huolala were one of the freight platforms of the meeting.

Didi, who is expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange later this year, has long had a strained relationship with authorities after a series of security incidents – and even murders – involving their drivers in 2018 sparked severe police warnings and the arrest of the company’s car-sharing service.

Didi was again criticized by the transport ministry in March when drivers complained that the company had raised passenger prices without adequately raising wages.

Didi responded last week with a commitment to be more transparent and posted a breakdown of costs per average order by 2020. He said drivers received almost 80% in most cases, but that there was a small number of “extreme” cases. , which accounts for only 2.7%, where the company received 30% of the total cost of the trip, the group said.

Part of the government’s motivation for convening the companies was to ensure social stability among the millions of drivers who made a living through the Didi platform, Tao said. “In cities like Beijing, there are tens of thousands of drivers who know each other well and can stage protests,” he said. “The authorities want to avoid this situation.”