China’s Ministry of Transport (MoT) issued a document on July 22 requiring the transportation authorities of all cities to collect license information of online ride-hailing platforms, their vehicles, and their drivers and upload these data to the united industry platform for real-time sharing, as reported by Reuters on the same day. Specifically, after obtaining a business license, an online ride-hailing firm will need to transmit the basic data of the company, its vehicles, drivers, and orders, business information, positioning information, and service quality data to the united industry platform by midnight the next day. Moreover, the data generated by ride-hailing platforms should neither be transmitted through third-party platforms or systems nor be used for commercial purposes. These data must be stored for at least two years, extending the previous requirement of six months.

The tightened data rules on China’s ride-hailing industry came one day after the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) fined ride-hailing major Didi Global a record fine of USD1.2bn for 16 legal violations. including the illegal collection of data from drivers and passengers. According to CAC, the way Didi processed user information seriously affected national security. Prompted by concerns, the MoT vowed to conduct security investigations periodically, promptly rectify security risks and loopholes discovered, form a whole-process data security management system, and take necessary measures to prevent data from being falsified, damaged, leaked, or illegally obtained or illegally used.

Sources:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-will-require-online-ride-hailing-firms-submit-real-time-data-2022-07-22/

https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/roll/2022-07-22/doc-imizmscv3135376.shtml?finpagefr=p_114

https://www.reuters.com/technology/china-fines-didi-global-12-bln-violating-data-security-laws-2022-07-21/

https://pandaily.com/china-strengthens-data-supervision-of-car-hailing-platforms/