China: Adopted Interim Measures for Administration of Online Taxi Booking Business Operations introducing legal framework for ride-hailing apps

On 27 July 2016, China's Ministry of Transport (MOT) together with seven other government agencies (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Commerce, State Administration for Industry and Commerce, State Administration for Market Regulation, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, and State Cyberspace Administration) adopted the Interim Measures on the Administration of Online Taxi Reservation Business Services, which would take effect on 1 November 2016. These measures are China's first national-level regulations for the online ride-hailing and taxi reservation industry. Among others, the measures require online taxi reservations platforms to: Maintain servers in China (Article 5); provide database access to and cooperate with government authorities (Articles 5 and 27); obtain a Network Taxi Reservations Operating Licence (Article 8); and protect the personal data of drivers, service users and passengers (Article 26).