Written：2018/9/4
Currently I am on the plane back to Seattle, and it occurred to me that it was important to write something about one of the biggest company in China- DiDi and its current behaviors.
Before getting in to DiDi, I am sure everyone knows about Uber. Being one of the biggest rent car company in the world, Uber has definitely gone up in its market values over the past few years.Many North Americans choose it as an alternative or even first choice when Taxi or driving was impossible and unnecessary. To Uber however, it was just a matter of running the online app and contacting drivers, which barely cost them anything to succeed. What a win win situation for drivers and company itself.
Just like Uber, DiDi is another online car app that offers personal driving service like Taxi, all you have to do is choose your location and a driver will automatically come and get you. They use personal cars and its safe because you get to see their profile online. The one thing we have to know though, is that DiDi has SUCH a bigger market then Uber. It originated from China, a population of 15 billion people where most of them don’t have cars because its too inconvenient and expensive. In that case, DiDi was able to develop a much bigger system and company and own the Chinese market as a result. At the same time, DiDi purchased Uber and became a very strong company with many resources in China with little competitors.
The Company Didi may have made billions of dollars a year, but I am not here to compliment them, because too much things that happened with them recently does not make the company look trustworthy. It all started with my family. We were on our way back from Beijing and fortunately caught the last subway to a near stop by our house, so we could get a taxi and bus back home. My family can definitely call one of our personal drivers,have them drive to the train station and pick us up, but most of the time all of us find it unnecessary, so we choose public transportation as a more convenient way to return. While we got off at the near stop, it was already 10:30, normally you couldn’t find people walking on the street anywhere in US,but this is Shanghai after all and we live downtown, so it never was a part of our consideration the need to get a taxi home. We stood by the road and saw a taxi, we waved but he didn’t stop. Weird, we thought, there was no one in the car. The next car came, and we did the same thing, he didn’t stop either. “Hm,maybe it was just late, and they are in a bad mood, lets wait for the next one!” We said to ourselves again. The third one came, and the fourth one and the fifth…. None of the taxi stopped. Now, it is 11 and we have already stood by the road for 30 minutes. We were mad and frustrated. While we went out of patience, there were some people by us and were using the app DiDi to get taxis or personal drivers. Even though we could’ve gotten a “DiDi” too, but we refused. We didn’t want to, or at least my dad didn’t want to give in to the company. He is 50 years old and I understand, its hard for him to accept new things. For me, it was just a matter of pressing a button and scan my face through WeChat pay for the fee.
We walked around the corner, thinking we’d get more cars on the cross road. I swear, a million cars drove by again and none of them stopped. Now, I am mad too, because I wanted to get home and not stand in the cold anymore. There was nothing we could do and almost 45 minutes after we got out of the subway, we had to get an “DiDi” because there was nothing available except the app... We weren’t happy but we wanted to leave.
While waiting, at least 30 people ran outside at different times and got into their own “DiDi” cars. All of a sudden,I realized something, most of the taxi drivers has the app too, so they could get more business, and that was thinking outside the box for me because I never knew it was allowed…
My family later had a discussion on it,first of all we asked ourselves why none of the taxis stopped. I said because for the drivers, they may not make as much or the same before they got the app,but getting the app means they are promised to have a business, while there’s a huge chance if you only drive around on the road and nobody wants a taxi.Getting an app means you will probably be busy 90% of the time, while just driving around maybe 50%. For the taxi drivers, I believe they value profit over everything. Its has nothing to do with themselves, but I think our society and government should be responsible for this, who published policies and rules that induced people’s hearts and twisted their humanity and values. For our people, none of us would say that the government had once provided enough assurance or retirement money to ensure their life if they didn’t work. Money was and still is the most important thing to them.
Since phones are so popularized now, almost everyone has a phone and knows how to use it. But there is a really important thing to know: It was nothing for us to stand 45, but what about the older people?? Those who don’t have a phone and aren’t as skilled in technology??What are they going to do when they realize no taxi are willing to stop for them? That is just not fair, many of them can’t even stand straight and wait for 10 minutes. I understand we look at things differently and that different countries have different social structures, but for China, over 30% or more are senior citizens who are over 65, over 95% of them never learned how to drive or don’t even drive at this age, our society is filled with old people. How are they going to get to places if buses and subway are too far away?? There is so many “no’s” to questions like this, so I really hope new policies published will benefit all age group, not just the younger generation.
We got home safely while trying to question the driver every question we had: how much money do you guys make every day?Does all or just some taxi drivers use the app? … We wanted to get to know the system, and in some ways, find the answers to our grievances.
The next day, my family sat down for a discussion for the questions who asked. My mom told us that she did some research: Nowadays, almost all taxis has two drivers who share the same car, so they can reduce fees and only work 15 days each month, and for every person 20 hours a day. I believe statistics speak louder than words, so we did some calculations and there were four aspects:
1. Permission fees: To own the car and run it, it costs 6500 yuan (928 dollars)per person each month, they have the right to use but the taxi companies still hold ownership over the cars.
2. Operate fees: Gas money and food are the two biggest fees in this category. We estimated Gas costs about 300 yuan each day * 15 days =4500 yuan (642 dollars) per person per month. If they get busy and wants to save money, then two meals are only necessary. In China, food costs super cheap and there are so many choices so not being happy with your food because “the cheaper it is the grosser it might be doesn’t exist”, thank God. Let’s say if 15 yuan per meal *2=30 yuan for a day, 30*15 days=450 yuan(64 dollars a month)
3. Accidental & Maintenance fees: 1000yuan each month because its unpredictable and we don’t really know the exact numbers.
The total cost would be:6500+4500+450+1000=12500yuan= 1800 dollars per month per person
If they leave the house at 5 and returns home the next day in the morning at 1 am, hoping to make at least 5000 yuan(700 dollars) each month, it would be 13000 (the cost to run) +5000(the money they hope to earn) =18000 (the amount of money the drivers need to make each month per person in order to earn 5000 yuan). Since they work 15 days , so 18000/15=1200 yuan (171 dollars) per day. Last but not least, since they work 20 hours per day at least, so 1200/20=60 yuan (8 dollars) per hour,and there are 60 minutes in an hour, so the taxi drivers must have customers every minute because 60/60=1, and using DiDi can promise that.
And when DiDi came in to the market, Taxi customers have been decreasing ever since on a huge scale, no businesses were promised after. As a result, many decided to use DiDi because the app can protect them from losing the job, even if it meant making about the same amount of money as before.
The fees above don’t cover parking fees on occasion.and also, because being a taxi driver represents the lower working class, many of the local gangs (surprise or not, some still exists lol) oppresses the working-class people, and it always ended up being a robbery of money, but we are not going to count the money here because its so sad and we don’t know exact numbers…
Anyhow, DiDi was a great platform for all the people, not only it had made people’s life more convenient but also giving more job opportunities to people. But now, it has become a bad commercial problem as it ruined the good habitat for taxi drivers. Most of them are forced to get the app. At the same time, for customers, there is nothing to lose because getting a DiDi means I will definitely be where I want to be, and it tells you an exact amount of time. Not many people wanted to be in the situation where my family was, stood by the road for 40 minutes and no cars stopped…
But recently, DiDi has become a top search word on Baidu-the biggest search engine in china and third biggest in the world, because someone died in the car. It wasn’t like a car accident, it was raping. The driver raped a 20 years old girl and killed her, later he threw the girl and the car into a river and ran away. I am guessing this won’t be a news for many people because girls are warned in US, at least to my knowledge that they are not safe and don’t use Ubers, also they are expensive…but this has for sure pushed the company in to public opinion, because people are asked to reconsider, is it really a all win situation for them? What about safety issues?
It is discovered that many drivers who work as DiDi drivers had previously been in Jail or sold drugs and alcohol illegal.How is that going to create a safe environment if the only it will do is affect those who are innocent and young in such a bad way? This has become one of its worst behaviors, for sure.
But for China, with such a huge market demand, people ignore these kind of problems fast and especially girls don’t get warned as much. Since DiDi is so much cheaper, many still uses the app as away of transportation. This is not the first time the company has had the same problem,in 2 years, 30 girls died, and 60% after being raped. Now, I believe numbers tell so much more then they look, and it is obvious that the company has some issues.
Currently, the company has closed one of their main service-where the driver picks us more then 1 people at the same time while all of them going to the same direction. Many used it because the costs were reduced by 30% percent or more, as a result, it became a top choice for many.
However, not all DiDi drivers are bad. Just like humans, there are different kinds of us, and among the 30 million Chinese DiDi drivers, some were awarded best drivers because they saved lives and gave the best service there could be, so its not really up to us whether DiDi is the worst company ever, but to believe that they will make further adjustments and develop a better system. My job is to write what I observe and tell the truth,hoping that it could be an action to motivate people who have power and change the problems in the society.
While I was in Beijing, we couldn’t get taxis because they were so fully booked and when we got an DiDi it showed that there’s 78 people or more waiting in front of you almost every time, so it became almost a trick to us that get the car 30 minutes before leaving so we could use the time efficiently. DiDi is currently illegal in China. I repeat ILLEGAL. But how come the government doesn’t stop it? Honestly, I don’t know, but I think most of it is because the amount of jobs the company has provided, which boosted our country’s economy in so many ways. Being illegal, you can still get caught while driving and get a 30 thousand yuan (4285 dollars) per ticket, for many who work part time as DiDi drivers, that ticket could literally ruin their extra income for a whole month, not to mention if it is for something important. But so many people still do it, knowing the risk. There are so many high requirements to be a DiDi driver: In order to drive, you need to own a car and has a license plate. Dude, that’s HARD. In China, average cars and license plate cost about the same, around 100 thousand yuan (14285 dollars. For me personally, I would be broke for a license plate in China.
Add on to that, you need to be local at where you drive. For example, if you are born Xi’an, you can’t drive in Shanghai because you are not from Shanghai, the only place you can drive is Xi’an.In other words, you can only drive in places where you hold a citizenship. A citizenship of big cities is just as hard as getting into an Ivy League college. But the bigger the city, the more the money. So many people come to big cities like Shanghai and Beijing for a job and opportunities it can provide,they would care less about being a DiDi driver, even if the car and license plate would take everything away from them…but if it seemed like an easy job to pick up on, many would start from it. And if you get caught with everything I have mentioned above, you get a four-thousand-dollar ticket and your car gets taken away. That sounds “cool”.
There are two types of DiDi drivers, full time and part time. Part time makes the extra money and aren’t professional,while the full time lives off of the job and any up or downs the company has,they will be the first ones to be affected directly. The worst thing is that you don’t know if you will get a part time or a full time, since the part time doesn’t leave key information online, in case you are in an accident, nobody can help you because there were no proof. Anyhow, its just really dangerous, and honestly just don’t use it even though its so cheap and convenient, because you never know if the same things that happened on the girls especially, would happen on you.
Now, DiDi has nothing to do with me,really. I have only been their customers twice in my life because there were no more shared bikes on the road and I was gifted with free rides. But knowing how it works interest me, because it connects with so many different aspects of our society. Illegal, caused death, ruining the economic cycle are just few of the many worst behaviors of DiDi. But really, I think their worst behavior is to have so many of us can’t live without the app. Its addicting, just like WeChat. Its so bad at the same time, but so useful.
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