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Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

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Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#21

Post by HillRat »

chrischen wrote: post #15
adventured wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes what the consequences of that should be. Since you're arguing in favor of elaborate protectionism, that becomes a central issue. Should Xiaomi be artificially blocked from selling smart phones in the US? Should all Huawei products be blocked? Should the policy of the US Government be to directly assist Apple versus Samsung (or any other competitor) in the US market? Should the US begin directly s…

Because Uber invests most of their money on US soil, on US engineers, that go back into the US economy. They just want to release an app that harvests money from Chinese consumers. So if China can protect a local company that will clone uber, but with the difference of investing in local human capital and infrastructure, why not take that opportunity?

So if China can protect a local company that will clone uber, but with the difference of investing in local human capital and infrastructure, why not take that opportunity?

China is the textbook beneficiary of global free trade -- as Donald Trump's candidacy shows, there's significant appetite amongst the American electorate for renewed protectionism. Certainly many voters think (wrongly, I would argue) that Chinese manufacturing "harvests money" from American consumers.

Having said that, I don't think there's any evidence that the Chinese government put an anticompetitive thumb on the scales against Uber. That doesn't mean there's a level playing field for Western companies in China, but Uber's failure can be chalked up to a number of strategic missteps.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#22

Post by adventured »

chrischen wrote: post #15
adventured wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes what the consequences of that should be. Since you're arguing in favor of elaborate protectionism, that becomes a central issue. Should Xiaomi be artificially blocked from selling smart phones in the US? Should all Huawei products be blocked? Should the policy of the US Government be to directly assist Apple versus Samsung (or any other competitor) in the US market? Should the US begin directly s…

Because Uber invests most of their money on US soil, on US engineers, that go back into the US economy. They just want to release an app that harvests money from Chinese consumers. So if China can protect a local company that will clone uber, but with the difference of investing in local human capital and infrastructure, why not take that opportunity?

Why shouldn't the US begin very aggressively promoting its own domestic corporations, directly, at the expense of foreign companies as well then? Using all means available to the US Government to do so.

Nobody here that is saying it's great for China to protect its local ecosystem, will think it's ok for the US Government to do likewise and doing everything in its means to leverage its particular advantages in favor of companies.

How about the Fed set up a US manufacturing fund. Instantly create a trillion dollar sovereign fund out of thin air, to decimate or buy-up foreign manufacturing competition. Of course the Fed wouldn't be so obvious about it, you'd want other nations to be the frog getting boiled in the pot, you want them to go to sleep with assurances that it's nothing sinister. Next thing you know, Tesla is getting $100 billion in free capital to go after BMW and Mercedes with subsidized vehicles. Or maybe the US should start a state owned lithium enterprise and buy up all the lithium supply, and use the leverage in the Western Hemisphere, to block out all foreign access to lithium in South America. And leverage all of that into a huge benefit to domestic electric car production. China did the same thing with rare earth metals. Or how about Uber get a 0% loan from the Fed for $50 billion, to go after the rest of the world (examples intentionally exaggerated). Those are the sort of policies that China has in place right now across numerous major industries.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#23

Post by 15thandwhatever »

mrharrison wrote: post #20
3pt14159 wrote: post #3

This is just a Bloomberg PR piece. China has a plan for the internet: Don't let outsiders control critical IT infrastructure / personal data. > It was widely suggested in press accounts that the Chinese government helped Didi in its battle against Uber. Cheng rejects that, noting that as the largest ride-hailing company, Didi had to shoulder most of the regulatory burden and paid tens of millions of yuan to cover dri…

I agree, to that extent, I really wish Bloomberg or Business Insider articles weren't posted on HN. They often are fluff and don't understand the details, and thus just create unneeded noise on HN.

I disagree on a wholesale "ban". There are some excellent Bloomberg pieces that dive into details correctly (particularly items by Matt Levine and Megan McArdle over at Bloomberg view).

But these shiny, infographic-like Bloomberg Businessweek features tend to be light and fluffy. Ugh.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#24

Post by smitherfield »

3pt14159 wrote: post #3

This is just a Bloomberg PR piece. China has a plan for the internet: Don't let outsiders control critical IT infrastructure / personal data. > It was widely suggested in press accounts that the Chinese government helped Didi in its battle against Uber. Cheng rejects that, noting that as the largest ride-hailing company, Didi had to shoulder most of the regulatory burden and paid tens of millions of yuan to cover dri…

A thought that occurred to me recently, is that the main purpose of China's "Great Firewall" isn't so much silencing dissent[0], as it is protectionism.

By making it effectively impossible for foreign (i.e. American) internet companies to operate in China, they've ensured that the spaces occupied by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Uber, and even to some extent Microsoft have been filled by Chinese-owned and China-based companies.

[0] Although that too, of course.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#25

Post by Jack000 »

aianus wrote: post #17
chrischen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the world is divided into factions, and China is a massive country that just happens to be a separate faction, which means they can't divide labor with the US, they have to compete head on, or else they won't get a fare share of the pie. US had a head start on development, which means these two factions didn't have a level playing ground to compete for a piece of the pie. Therefore China must protect t…

The pie is not a fixed size. The Chinese could produce something new and innovative instead of clones and sell those to the US, making the pie bigger for everyone.

Protectionism is bad in general - it works until everyone starts doing it, then everyone is worse off. But the benefits of protectionism in the short term is not equally distributed and China definitely has greater incentive.

It worked for their manufacturing ecosystem, maybe it'll work for tech too.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#26

Post by Fricken »

bpodgursky wrote: post #10
the_common_man wrote: post #8

For those crying wolf about protectionism... In general, I think most nations should have more closed door policies like China. My country (which won't be named) does not have a startup ecosystem anymore and we have become a consumption ground for one silicon valley startup after another. Instead of fostering local startups and paying some money (since many bootstrap and do not have big pockets), all the companies ju…

> We had a local chat start up but slack ate their lunch. Everyone here just uses the slack free tier. How do you compete against free? The point of division of labor (aka how civilization got built) is that it's not _necessary_ to spend time re-doing the same thing others are doing. Slack is giving you something for free that you don't _have_ to spend time or money building now. Now you have X engineers free to work…

Nations, communities, individuals: they value autonomy. Building their own networks rather than submitting to whatever is being fed by silicon valley is not a pointless job.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#28

Post by tomtang0514 »

chrischen wrote: post #12
usaar333 wrote: post #4

The article is rather light on details on what Didi actually did better, but from using Uber as a foreigner in China, I could see significant problems in Uber's product execution: 1. The Android app continues to use Google Maps which is Great Firewall blocked, meaning I had to use a VPN to load uncached tiles. 2. Uber in turn IP blocks EC2, preventing me from using my main VPN while in app. 3. Entities on the map are…

#1 - was this because you were still using the US store downloaded app? I highly doubt they would release Uber to Chinese people with a non-working maps.

When I was in China early this year, they use baidu map on my iphone version. It looks like there was a partnership between baidu and uber back then. There's even a "get Uber" feature build inside Baidu Map app back then.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#29

Post by tluyben2 »

tomtang0514 wrote: post #28
chrischen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 - was this because you were still using the US store downloaded app? I highly doubt they would release Uber to Chinese people with a non-working maps.

When I was in China early this year, they use baidu map on my iphone version. It looks like there was a partnership between baidu and uber back then. There's even a "get Uber" feature build inside Baidu Map app back then.

It uses Baidu for sure and has been for at least 1.5 years.

Edit: looked up the first time I used Uber in Shanghai.

Re: Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower

#30

Post by tomtang0514 »

aianus wrote: post #17
chrischen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the world is divided into factions, and China is a massive country that just happens to be a separate faction, which means they can't divide labor with the US, they have to compete head on, or else they won't get a fare share of the pie. US had a head start on development, which means these two factions didn't have a level playing ground to compete for a piece of the pie. Therefore China must protect t…

The pie is not a fixed size. The Chinese could produce something new and innovative instead of clones and sell those to the US, making the pie bigger for everyone.

They tried, and US government bans Huawei
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