Protests and violence reported in Uber’s ‘new number one’ city of Chengdu

The southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu is pretty important to Uber. It just recently became Uber’s top city globally in terms of daily completed rides, and perhaps as a result, Uber even chose Chengdu as the first city to get its new UberCOMMUTE feature.

But reports on Weibo tonight suggest all is not well in Uber’s new Chinese flagship city. Exactly what happened isn’t entirely clear, but Weibo users are posting images of violent protesters – Uber and Didi drivers, apparently. The protesters were reportedly set off by “fishing” arrests in which police officers pretended to be customers, called for cars, and then arrested the drivers. At least one driver was reportedly also beaten by police (photo at right).

Also being shared is the image below, which reportedly shows the driver being beaten. Some Weibo reports have suggested the police also took his car and some money. That same Weibo post also alleges that when someone contacted local authorities to complain about the arrest and assault, they were told the authorities “didn’t care” because Didi and Uber were illegal. All of this should be taken with a huge grain of salt, of course, given the anonymous source, but that’s the story that’s spreading online right now.

Whatever exactly happened, it seems clear that drivers are quite upset about it, and images of protests including at least one flipped car have been popping up on Chinese BBS forums and on Weibo.