A report from the Public Security Bureau of Yueqing City in Zhejiang Province stated that on August 24, a 20 years old young woman known only by her surname as Zhao intended to take a ride by using ride-hitching app DiDi; she was later raped and murdered by the driver known by the surname Zhong. On the next day, police at Yueqing City announced that the suspect was arrested. After the preliminary investigation, Zhong, the DiDi driver confessed to the criminal acts of raping and murdering Zhao. At present, the victim's body has been found and the case is under further investigation.
This incident did not appear out of sudden. It has been reported that Zhao sent messages to her friend to express her fear as the driver drove her to a remote place, then another message asking for help before she became uncontactable. Sensing things had gone wrong; her friend contacted DiDi but only received response two hours ago where the ride-hitching company said that the driver had been contacted and he said the passenger did not get into the car.
This is quite similar to another tragedy happened three months ago, where an air stewardess by the name of Li Mingzhu was raped and murdered by a ride-hitching driver in Henan. DiDi apologized to Li's family back then, stated that "… as a platform, we have let down the users. In this matter, we have an undeniable responsibility". During that period of time, DiDi's ride-hitching service had been shut down nationwide for a week. Now, DiDi can only deliver a very similar apology.
Such vicious incidents have emerged when there is the nationwide emphasis on safe production, food safety, and drug safety, adding a new type of security incident to the country, namely service industry security. Anbound's researchers remind that if a similar tragedy occurs repeatedly in a certain type of service industry, it means that there is a systematic loophole in this business model. This is the case for the market-based platform business. If there is no systematic rectification and adjustment, it is entirely possible that there will be other rape and murder cases in DiDi's ride-hitching services.
Some have said that legally speaking, this kind of ride-hitching service is "carpooling"; it is a way of mutual assistance for citizens and sharing the cost of travel, not "online car-hauling" that people understand it to be. Therefore, ride-hitching business is not subject to the Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Booking of Taxi Operating Services. DiDi can argue that it does not provide transportation services; in the whole incident, DiDi is only an intermediary that provides information matching services. DiDi and passengers are in "intermediate contractual relationships", and it does not need to bear direct legal responsibility for the victim's murder.
However, this argument for the DiDi's platform is untenable. In our view, as intermediation services, the platform still needs to bear the corresponding legal responsibilities. First, DiDi provides information matching services that directly contribute to the ride-hitching transactions. It is understood that DiDi has a driver registration process, but the registration conditions are extremely relaxed, and there are obvious loopholes in the registration monitoring, such as in a case where a female driver passed the monitoring process after uploading the documents of a male driver.
Secondly, DiDi as a platform with a monopoly nature actually provides credit checking service on the ride-hitching drivers and service. The customers would think that such service provided by the DiDi platform has higher credibility. In the past, although the management of traditional taxis was less efficient than online car-hauling service, the taxis and blacklisted cars were clearly stated, and users would be more alert on the blacklisted cars. Now, users seem to have no conception about the blacklisted cars on DiDi, and they might even think those cars belong to DiDi. Trusting the cars and the driver based on their trust in the platform has led to the tragedies.
Third, the DiDi Platform has collected money from the ride-hitching business; while this is only a relatively small amount of information service fees, collecting money means undertaking management responsibility. If it takes the money but refuses to bear the corresponding responsibilities, it should not engage in related services and does not have the corresponding business qualifications. It is understood that the guidance issued by different local governments stipulates the number of daily orders for the vehicles, and the upper limit for Beijing, Shanghai and other places is 2 times. However, the maximum number of pick-ups per day is 15 for DiDi, which is significantly higher than the regulations of local governments. This means that there is a certain number of "full-time car owners" in such services. They do not share their rides with others during their usual commute but are operating full-time to gain profit.
Fourth, the ride-hitching business is actually an illegal business. It provides an umbrella for illegal car-ride business and has an impact on the formal taxi business (including DiDi's cars). Some taxi drivers said that many of the DiDi's cars are blacklisted cars. In July 2018, Provisions on the Investigation and Handling of Illegal Passenger Transport in Beijing was implemented. The first law enforcement brigade of the Beijing Traffic Law Enforcement General Team pointed out that, "During investigations on illegal operations, it had been found out that some blacklisted vehicles were rented through leasing companies. Vehicles can also be registered on the DiDi platform. The platform distribution shows that the number of blacklisted cars on DiDi's platform is the highest".
Fifth, DiDi responds very slowly to customer alarm messages. Judging from the two cases of rape and murder, the victims sent out information in different forms before the incident, but the response and handling by DiDi were extremely slow, and there is no linkage with the public security system in vital issues like safety. Moreover, in the case happened in Yueqing, the involved driver has already been previously complained about harassing women and tracking female passengers, but unfortunately, such information was not given attention by DiDi. According to the statistics of Jiguang Big Data, in online car-hauling services, the proportion of women who uses the services of companies like Easy Go and DiDi is relatively high, being 47.5% and 41.4% respectively; as there is a huge number of DiDi users, the overall market for female users is quite big. In this regard, the DiDi has indeed violated the trust of its female users.
The repeated significant security risks in DiDi shows that In addition to the issues in the management of the platform, it is also related to the monopoly of the technology companies in the Internet era. In fact, Internet technology companies have a natural monopoly, whether it is Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, or China's Alibaba, Baidu, WeChat, and DiDi; when they grow bigger, they will show the monopolistic nature of "winner-take-all". These Internet companies are also willing to use their strong monopoly to gain more monopolistic interests and privileges, especially their monopoly rights in Big Data, which could evolve into the daunting monopoly of interest in the future.
Based on the above considerations, we suggest that Chinese government departments should consider terminating all online ride-hitching platforms to stop this kind of service that carries social risks, possibly being illegal, and impacts on other legitimate taxi services. The result of terminating such a service is that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Perhaps the biggest difficulty is not the lack of law nor the management problem, but the strong capital will behind the online car-hauling platform. Take DiDi as an example; according to the 2017 China Unicorn Enterprise Development Report released in March 2018, DiDi's valuation is US$56 billion, ranking the second. DiDi's investment shareholders include Internet giants, multinational capital and national groups like Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Apple, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Fund, China Investment, Coatue, China Merchants Bank, Ping An Ventures, CITIC Industry Fund, Ant Financial and China Life Insurance. Stimulated by the motives of large-scale and high valuation, and being eager to be listed as soon as possible, these capital giants will do everything in their power to maintain the interests and high valuation of the online car-hauling platform.
Will the termination of the ride-hitching service of the online car-hauling platform affect the service to the public? According to some statistics, in 2017, DiDi served 7.4 billion trips, and the number of users who served every day exceeded 30 million to 40 million. In our opinion, it should be a small problem. The ride-hitching service is not the mainstream in the service of shared transportation, and this form of service is not irreplaceable. There is a variety of services such as traditional taxi service, public transportation, and various forms of online car-hauling vehicles. The reason why the online car-hauling platform launched this service is to maintain its position in every industry chain, thus maintaining a monopoly in the business field. However, as a monopolistic platform, such company should also consider another layer of the problem- the bigger the platform, the greater the responsibility. The online car-hauling platform not only has to bear legal responsibility but must also assume social and moral responsibilities.
Final Analysis Conclusion:
There are systematic risks and negative impacts on the online ride-hitching business, and relevant government departments should fully terminate such business.
