As the Chinese ridehailing app prepares for a giant IPO in New York, a look at why one of its biggest obstacles going forward could take place on its home turf.
Listen to SupChina editor-at-large and Sinica podcast host Kaiser Kuo read this article.
When Xi Jinping lined up the leaders of the world’s biggest tech companies for a class photo during his 2015 Seattle visit, the man standing in the top row, second from the left, had plenty of reason to smile. Not only had 32-year-old Cheng Wei been invited to a room full of A-listers — the chief executives of Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Alibaba were all there — but his chief rival, the CEO of Uber, had been kept out.
Cheng’s ridesharing app, Didi Chuxing, was only three years old at the time, but the photo foreshadowed Didi’s spectacular rise. The next year, Uber threw in the towel in China, leaving Didi Chuxing to enjoy a near monopoly in the largest commuter market in the world. And over the next five years, Cheng expanded Didi’s operations well beyond China — the company now operates in 15 countries with plans to launch soon in Western Europe — and well beyond rideshar
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Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative under Donald Trump, reflects on his decision to launch the trade war with China and begin the process of "strategic decoupling" — a process he says the U.S. must see through to the end.
