
China’s anti-trust regulators are investigating the Didi-Uber deal - smb06
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/01/chinas-anti-trust-regulators-are-investigating-the-didi-uber-deal/
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dragonbonheur
Didi could have let Uber die by itself and get the totality of the Chinese
market on its own without sacrificing anything. As it stands now, Uber gets
shares of Didi when they were going bankrupt. It's like saying "I'm broke now,
but I still want your money!". It may not feel fair to some foreign observers
who believe China is "big bad, evil!" but it's natural that some Chinese
people question the deal- Apple owns part of Didi, now Uber- who's next?
"Activist" bean-counter vampire shareholders like Carl Icahn? It would be a
big mistake for the Chinese to let people like him get a foothold in China or
anywhere near Chinese companies.

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jmknoll
> Didi could have let Uber die by itself and get the totality of the Chinese
> market on its own without sacrificing anything.

The very point of the deal was because both companies were hemorrhaging their
investors' money, and neither wanted to sacrifice any more. If that's what the
regulators are investigating, then they're doing their job. Two companies
collaborating to stop losing money is pretty close to the definitely of a
cartel.

This keeps getting framed as a China vs the World thing, as so many things
Chinese do, but what really happened here is that two companies, backed by a
set of the largest multinational investors in the world, are collaborating to
screw the consumer, who this time is the average Chinese user of Didi or Uber.

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robbiep
China has anti-trust regulators?!

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balabaster
Between what we hear out of the Western news agencies, various activist
groups, hackers and whatnot, the more I hear about China, the more questions I
have about what we (the Western public) know about China.

Given China's behaviour towards Western corporations (Google et. al.) which
was reported in such a way as can only be interpreted as antitrust, this does
seem to be paradoxical. Though, the more I read about Chinese politics the
less adds up, much like Western politics. It makes me wonder if everything
we're taught about China is fabrication, propaganda, lies, half truths and
spin - much the same as our own political system.

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seanmcdirmid
The western media makes China out to be less crazy and dysfunctional than it
actually is, probably because no one would actually believe them if they
reported more on the truth. E.g. China's pollution is much worse than western
news story would suggest, it literally is unimaginable to most westerners.

If you want a real perspective on China, move there, or at least read Chinese
propaganda directly (chinadaily, globaltimes). The latter is especially useful
given how bad it is, and you quickly realize how much scarily closer China is
teetering towards a DPRK-style dictatorship than would be apparent just by
reading CNN.

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ced
I'm sure it's horrible in some cities, but I lived in a 4.5M-people city in
the South (Kunming) for a year, and its air pollution level was entirely
comparable to North American cities of the same size. What are you basing your
opinion on? The standards of living of Chinese people are rapidly improving.
I'm sure I would be horrified to see how the sausages are made, and I wouldn't
bet on its long-term success, but I wouldn't call it dysfunctional.

I agree with GP; the news media makes it sound like a horrible place, but
living there felt like living in a developing east-European country. I'm much
more worried about India.

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Retric
Kunming is west of most of the pollution. Which keeps getting worse as you
approach the ocean near central / NE China. [http://berkeleyearth.org/air-
pollution-and-cigarette-equival...](http://berkeleyearth.org/air-pollution-
and-cigarette-equivalence/)

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ced
True, but I was under the impression that even on the coast, a few cities are
_really bad_, but most are ok enough (i.e. polluted, but not worryingly so).
Do you have any personal experience there?

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personjerry
I'm there right now, visited Shanghai, Suzhou, Chengdu. In most populous
cities you can't see past a few km because of what first appears to be fog in
the morning, but then you realize is smog. Tap water is always undrinkable.

