Restricted Generalizability of City Innovation Policies: The Case of E-hailing in China

Abstract

Electronic-hailing (e-hailing) has experienced explosive growth in China. The Chinese government’s e-hailing policies illustrate its central–regional policy mix. This study analyzes e-hailing policies in four Chinese cities—Xi’an, Chengdu, Beijing, and Guangzhou—and compares these policies with goals in four policy areas. We show that local Chinese governments’ attitudes toward e-hailing are varied, contradictory, and in some cases even not in accordance with central government policies. Our insights demonstrate the limited generalizability of the policymaking experiments we studied. It would be difficult to infer broad policy implications from the experience any of the four cities has had with e-hailing, because China’s regionally decentralized innovation system and policy experiment process address the unique needs and contexts of regional governments on a case-by-case basis.