CAR Inc, a Chinese car rental company, released a series of advertisements on its Weibo account Thursday, implicitly accusing its U.S. competitor Uber for providing illegal and dangerous car-hailing service.
In the nine advertisement pictures posted on CAR's Weibo, nine different persons, including celebrities and entrepreneurs, state that illegal car-hailing service, which is also called black car in Chinese language, is dangerous in every way, followed by the slogan "Beat U."
One of the ads carried a message which meant that the company "supports the sharing economy but not you," where "you" was interpreted as referring to Uber by the Weibo users.
CAR also runs a car-hailing service and said the company owns the cars and hires the drivers so its car-hailing service is safer than other competitors, according to information on its website.
The CAR's "Beat U" ad is regarded as an attack on its U.S. rival Uber whose logo is "U," a move that didn't go well with the Web users.
CAR's ad posts had got over 5,000 comments on Weibo, most of which said it is a poor strategy to promote service by bashing a competitor.
Uber couldn't be reached for comment by press time.
China's car-hailing market is witnessing fierce competition while there is no clear regulation on the service.
Unlicensed private cars are prohibited in China from offering taxi services, but booming market demand has fueled the popularity of this kind of service providers and is hard to supervise as the orders are made through mobile phones. Only cars belonging to vehicle rental firms can be used for hiring services.
Uber, which offers taxi services in over 56 countries and regions worldwide, has encountered bans in 14 of them but has not stopped its expansion, media reports said.
