TechInAsia is reporting that a member of the Beijing Transportation Committee has declared that "the business model of private-car services is illegal," and dealt a swift blow to Uber fanatics in the process.
But that doesn't mean that Uber will always be illegal, and it certainly doesn't mean that the Uber app is about to be blocked. Baidu has announced plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the car service as it expands into the Mainland, and they likely ran an investment of that size past a few lawyers before going through with it.
Uber has only been in Beijing for less than a year and, as it has experienced in other parts of the world, is going through some growing pains. With a bit of time and some luck, city authorities can (hopefully) devise a regulatory system that makes Uber possible without ruffling too many feathers (looking at you, taxi drivers and transportation authorities).
If all this means is that Uber drivers have to, say, register their IDs and license plates with local authorities, then fantastic! If it means much more than that - say, higher fees, black-out hours or anything that involves more than a couple steps on the app users' part, then not so good.
Chinese uber-fans, gird your loins. As goes Beijing, so likely goes the rest of the country, so let's hope they figure this one out in a way that makes everybody happy.
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