According to reports on the ground, Didi used its local knowledge to act more nimbly in satisfying Chinese customers. But my guess is that if the American ride-sharing company had been more successful, China would have put a Mao-sized thumb on the scales.
So Didi was actually better; it's a bit unfair to say that otherwise the game would have been rigged.
Didi seems to be better at e.g. customer service. For example, their support can be reached by phone, and Uber support can be only reached via Email.
I'm sure people know, in China, call center operates way cheaper than in U.S. This and the fact that people are unwilling to use Email are some of the major sources of complaint on Uber I've heard about.
If thats true, Uber was simply being incompetent here.
We recently launched a shop on Tmall (Alibaba version of Amazon), and you usually hire a local agency to provide customer support for the chinese. 80% of the traffic is mobile, so they use SMS and phone calls a lot, emails much less than in the west. Also chat, they expect to be able to directly talk to someone via chat from the website.
Not doing so means disregarding local habits, good luck with that.
That's true, and I think this article was just using Uber as a jumping-off point to talk about doing business in China. I worked for a company not long ago that did business there, and the hoops they had to jump through were enormous.
So Didi was actually better; it's a bit unfair to say that otherwise the game would have been rigged.