The government needs to relax the requirement for becoming a rideshare driver for the sound development of ride-hailing services, said Cai Jiming, an NPC deputy and a professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, on Mar. 2. 

In 2016, China unveiled a nationwide regulation for ride-hailing services. Thereafter, many local transport authorities implemented strict regulations on ride-hailing services. In some major cities, drivers must have a local residence permit and vehicles must be registered locally.

"The thresholds led to a tough employment situation for a great number of migrant workers in big cities like Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai," said Cai, adding that in his estimates, just one percent of rideshare drivers in Beijing have a local residence permit, with three percent of drivers having residence permits in Shanghai.

According to Cai, many Chinese cities have introduced excessive regulations about online hailing vehicles that even included wheelbase and engine displacement requirements. In a number of cities, rideshare vehicles must not be more than three years old.

"All of these restrictions have made it much more difficult for people to request rideshare cars," said Cai. "More and more ride-hailing drivers have been forced to get off the apps and start carrying passengers for money illegally."

Cai has called on the government to allow qualified drivers without local residence permits to become rideshare drivers and improve supervision on rideshare platforms for safety concerns.

In addition, Cai suggested that China's transport authorities should deepen and broaden their dialogue with ride-hailing companies to resume P2P carpooling services, which were suspended due to an incident where a passenger was killed by her rideshare driver in August last year.