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Uber's top ten cities were Chinese
Entering China
Uber arrived in China in early 2013 with a crew that stayed in an apartment for a week or two and met everybody they could. At first it ran only Uber Black, a thin, niche service in high-end S-Class cars. Around 2014 it switched to full peer-to-peer ride sharing, which had never existed in China, and called it the people's Uber. The cars in the app were red.
The main rival, Didi, had built its app around taxis, and taxi drivers treat an app as a second-class job because they don't want to hand a share of revenue to a middleman. Didi copied Uber's products with almost artistic speed. While it caught up, Uber's growth went vertical, close to bending the curve to the left.
Baidu and the regulators
Everyone said a foreign company needed a Chinese partner holding about half of the business, and nobody could explain why. Uber gave up about 7 percent instead, to Baidu, because the regulatory heat was rising and a trusted partner inside China let it operate as a Chinese company.
In 2015, taxi strikes across Europe lit cars on fire in Paris, and China's transportation minister threw three Western newspapers on the table to show the chaos. The reply was that progress in China must be in harmony with stability, and that any hint of instability from Uber would get the company shut down immediately.
Why did China ask foreign firms for local partners?
For decades, China required foreign automakers to build cars through joint ventures capped at 50 percent foreign ownership. The arrangement gave local companies access to foreign technology and gave regulators a local party accountable for compliance. Similar partnership expectations shaped many other industries. China began lifting the ownership cap for some carmakers in 2018.
How did Baidu fit into Uber's plans?
Baidu runs China's largest search engine, and its mapping app is among the most used in the country. Mapping matters to a ride service because every pickup, route, and fare estimate depends on it. Baidu announced a strategic investment in Uber in December 2014 and began working to bring Uber into Baidu Maps.
How did Uber's China chapter end?
In August 2016, Uber merged its China operations into Didi. Uber received a stake of roughly 17.7 percent in the combined company, according to the announcement. Both companies had spent heavily on rider and driver subsidies while competing. Didi had also taken a $1 billion investment from Apple earlier that year.
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