Policy Briefing
12
JanIn many cities of China, residents used to found it difficult to take taxies. The appearance and rapid development of online car-hailing service provide convenience for passengers on car-hailing. However, the government have met some problems in supervising newly emerging service. On July 28th, 2016, the government laid out a set of rules aiming to regulate the taxi market and car-hailing services in China, which took effect on November 1st in the same year. As one of the first countries to legalize online car-hailing service, the central government of China has, in general, inspired a positive attitude toward the emerging car-hailing sector. However, the local governments have kept “putting weight” on the basis of central government’s policy and laid out extremely strict regulations in related to both cars and drivers of online car-hailing service. Why would the regulations of online car-hailing service in local governments being distorted or misused? Is it the result of local protectionism or benefit game? In order to answer these questions, NADS held the Lecture of New Political Economics on November 17th 2017, and invited Ma Liang, research fellow of NADS and associate professor at School of Public Administration and Policy, RUC, and Li Yanwei, associate professor at School of Public Administration, Nanjing Normal University as the main speakers. Zhang Nandiyang, deputy director of Center for Research on Government-Enterprise Relationship and Industrial Development, NADS, and assistant professor at School of Public Administration and Policy, RUC, moderated the lecture. Nie Huihua, the dean of Center for Research on Government-Enterprise Relationship and Industrial Development, NADS, and Professor at the School of Economics, RUC, provided commentaries. Our researchers collected 300 samples of online car-hailing policy contexts in cities of the whole countries and made a comparison. The analysis shows the similarities and differences of local governments in balancing the relationships among traditional car hailing service, online car-hailing service and passengers. Meanwhile, our research team compared the domestic policies with that of other countries and regions, and divided them into five kinds of models, including acquiescence, deterrence, suppress, embodiment, and common governance, and made suggestions for the reform of online car-hailing service.