Business travellers to China may soon need to make other arrangements for getting to and from appointments with China cracking down on apps for calling taxis.
In recent weeks, China made moves to shut down popular US on-demand car and taxi service Uber, and now two homegrown firms have also been forcibly shut down.
The Luoyang offices of Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, two of the country’s most popular taxi apps, were raided by law enforcement officers and shut down. The two companies merged earlier this year, creating one of the world’s largest smartphone based transport services valued at US$6 billion.
This comes after widespread complains from disgruntled taxi drivers about having business taken from them by unlicensed drivers. Many of them joined strikes across multiple Chinese cities in January this year to protest against taxi-calling apps.