Heading towards Modernity

In 2012, innovation gave way to new opportunities, but also new challenges. Today, thanks to mobile applications, taxis can be ordered online. It’s easy: you state your points of departure and arrival; if an empty taxi is nearby the driver answers and comes to pick you up immediately. Both parties benefit from this new service: passengers are certain of getting a taxi and can wait for it indoors if the weather is bad, and taxi drivers don’t have to cruise for miles to find fares. At the end of the ride, all the passenger has to do is tap his smartphone to pay via an integrated payment system. In addition, regular users might win discounts as a reward for loyalty.

The taxi-ordering app is a huge hit. About one fifth of journeys are booked from a smartphone, according to periodical Le Vent de la Chine. There were at first two competing apps in China: Kuaidi Dache (sponsored by Alibaba), which holds 56.5 percent of the market share, and Didi Dache, (sponsored by Tencent), with 43.3 percent of the market share, according to statistics from Analysys International. After engaging in fierce competition, the two online taxi reservation leaders declared last February 14 — maybe a Valentine’s Day miracle— a "strategic merger" valued at US $6 billion.

Taxi drivers see this as a pretty nifty invention, but one which nevertheless needs to be as controlled as their job. At the beginning of 2015, a wave of protests exploded throughout the country: on the one hand taxi drivers were complaining about the exorbitant fees they have to pay; on the other, they were protesting at the illegal competition these new technologies have generated. In response, China’s Ministry of Transport took action by forbidding, for safety reasons, private cars and unlicensed taxis offering services via these applications. Further rules are under consideration, for instance, restrictions based on time, and prohibiting taxi drivers from using the device when they are already carrying a customer.

New possibilities deriving from technological improvements focus more on Chinese cab drivers and highlight the difficulties they suffer in their profession, and how undervalued they are. It’s to be hoped that reforms arising from this situation will ensure them the better lot they deserve.