China Consumers Association to rev up supervision on car-hailing aggregation platforms

The China Consumers Association (CCA) on Monday said that it will carry out supervision on online car-hailing aggregation platforms, which will be a complementary measure to the regulated management of the platforms conducted by five government ministries which was released in April.

The CCA will clarify the responsibility held by car-hailing aggregation platforms and strengthen consumer rights protection from the supply side, the association said in a notice on Monday.

The association will also make efforts in regulating business behavior, maintaining fair competition market order, effectively maintaining industry safety and stability as well as protecting the legitimate rights and interests of passengers and drivers.

In addition to stricter supervision measures, the CCA clarified that online car-hailing aggregation platforms and partner companies need to implement network security precautions, strict data security protection and management, and take effective measures to prevent the disclosure, damage, loss of personal information.

Online car-hailing aggregation platform refers to a platform that relies on internet technology, cooperates with online car-hailing companies, and matches passenger supply and demand information to jointly provide online car-hailing services, CCA said in the notice.

Regulatory authorities in many cities have recently interviewed online car-hailing platforms, requiring them to clarify on prices and remove non-compliant vehicles from platform services.

For example, Shanghai city has interviewed 18 online car-hailing platform companies including Didi Chuxing and Gaode Dache from August 14, Shanghai Municipal Road Transport Administrative Bureau said on Friday.

The bureau said that by the end of 2023, the number of compliant service cars on Didi Chuxing's platform in Shanghai should account for 80 percent of its total. Didi said that by the end of September, it will remove 25,000 non-compliant vehicles in Shanghai.

Since the second half of 2022, car-hailing platforms have fought a "price war" to gain a larger market share. At the same time, relaxed access control has further increased the number of non-compliant cars registered with the platforms, which damaged the interests of compliant drivers.

As of June 30, 2023, a total of 318 online car-hailing platforms in the country have obtained business licenses, an increase of 5 from the previous month. A total of 5.79 million online car driver licenses and 2.434 million vehicle licenses for car-hailing service were issued by the end of June, according to statistics from the Ministry of Transport.

A total of 763 million orders were received by the car-hailing regulatory information interaction system in June, of which, 218 million orders came from online car-hailing aggregation platforms.