(柳青与美国名嘴查理·罗斯对谈，在她看来，科技创新已经极大地改变中国。)

Charlie Rose: Jean Liu is here. She is the President of Didi Chuxing. It is China's and the world's largest ride sharing company. It also offers services like bike sharing and car rentals, Alibaba, Apple, and Soft Bank are among her investors. Didi also has stakes in other companies around the world. I'm pleased to have Jean Liu at this table for the first time. Welcome.

Jean Liu: Thank you, Charlie. Thank you for having me here.

Charlie Rose: We have so looked forward to this. You have said a very interesting thing. You said it is really a world-class dilemma how to move around 800 million urban Chinese.How are you solving this dilemma?

Jean Liu: Yes, actually, that's one of my biggest motivation, joining this company three years ago. I give you a story -- right after I joined Didi, there's this woman coder coming to my office saying I want to resign. I asked her why, and she said, I got pregnant. I said, you know, you can still work here if you get pregnant. She said no, it's the commute that's killing me. And you know, she was spending three hours switching between buses and subways every day. And there are many, many people like that in China, 800 million Chinese that rides 1.4 billion times every day. So for us, you know, when we know how many people have these much need, we basically design a product for them. So the difference between us and a lot of other players is we offer a full range of services. So not just a private car share like here in the states, but also taxi.01:40Charlie Rose: Bicycles.

Jean Liu: Bicycle because not a lot of people can affordprivate car ride in China, so bicycles, and minibus,carpooling. There are a lot of very interesting local productswe are trying to connect with people.

Charlie Rose: How many cities in China are you operating?01:56Jean Liu: 400.

Charlie Rose: 400 cities.01:58Jean Liu: Yes, 400 cities. And a lot of them are mega cities, very different from cities here. When you think about cities here, I think New York is a huge city already. But there are more than 15 cities in China that are bigger than New York.

Charlie Rose: How many?

Jean Liu: 15.

Charlie Rose: 15 cities bigger than New York.

Jean Liu: Bigger than New York. And there I think in terms of, you know, population, there are six cities in the states that are bigger than the six million population, but that number in China is 44. Here in the states, ride share is nice to have, you know, Lyft and Uber, they are all doing great. But almost every family here in the states have one or two cars. If you don't have ride share, you can still drive yourself.

Charlie Rose: Sure.

Jean Liu: But in China, only 10 percent people have cars. But people still want to have a decent ride.02:50Charlie Rose: Yes.

Jean Liu: When you spend two hours on the road. So commute, I would say is number one challenges. And then you know, the pollution, of course, coming out of when you have mega cities, right, the air -- I see my kids playing, you know, every day when it's a bad weather, it just pains me to see that. And also, you know, safety is another thing we should be really mindful about. Especially, you know, there are so many people on the street, you know, the road accidents, the rate actually just increase higher. So there are just a lot of issues coming out of it. But we feel, you know, the industry we are in is so impactful that there is something we can do to help to solve this issue.

Charlie Rose: you made a speech at the Bloomberg Business Forum.

Jean Liu: Yeah.

Charlie Rose: At the Plaza Hotel about the future cities.

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: What did you tell them?

Jean Liu: Yes, basically you know, the Bloomberg Forum is for people -- I understand, for people to come together and talk about the world challenges and how we can collaborate together. And one of the key challenges I see is as we're just talking about, your first question, you know, when the cities become bigger, when there is more population, everyone wants a very good quality lifestyle. But at the same time how can we solve the resource issue. How can we know -- when a city becomes bigger, somehow we feel there's less space and time for us, everybody, right. And you know, how can we basically utilize the resource more efficiently, right. Make people feel living in the city life can still make me feel happy and inner peace. And my key point is the future cities should be around people, should be built around people rather than built around parking lots. Rather than built around vehicles.So let's do something, let's adopt some technology to make that happen.04:48Charlie Rose: Both in terms of attacking urban problems, as well as attacking business challenges, artificial intelligence, and the use of big data, have become tools, yes?

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: How so?

Jean Liu: Well, you know, in our business, if you think aboutit, you know, let's put away the jargons. When you think about, you know, what's the technology is really doing to help us -- let's say a passenger standing in the street, in our business, you know, turn on our app and click a button. And he wants a ride now, as fast as possible, right. But however, always - - all the time when it is peak hours, bad weather, there is not a car around, right. You cannot get it, so there are two things. Number one is you know the deep learning technology. Basically, we are training the system that can predict in the next 20 minutes in every corner of a city how many rides requests were coming out. So even before this person pressed this button, we dispatch a car to arrive to meet him. So that is the predictive capability. That is part of the artificial intelligence capability. And secondly, a lot of people think, oh, why don't you just dispatch the closest car to you? But we tell you, you know, on the map it's closest,but could be, you know, when a U.N. event, there's roadblocks.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Jean Liu: You know, in a very difficult road situation there'straffic control, you know, there's one-way situation, you know, the closest car may not be the most efficient one. So you know, we just know the system keeps learning what is going on in the local situation. This might sound a bit boring but if you think about it, this technology is really helping everybody to get a ride faster. And if you times that to 25 million rides a day, because we are completing 25 million rides a day, that's actually

Charlie Rose: You're completing 25 million rides a day?

Jean Liu: So every second in the peak hour is 600 rides,every second there are 600 rides delivered. And there's, you know, millions of, you know, times of calculation underneath it. So I think that is one application when people talk about A.I. You know, A.I. sounds like a very big word. But you know, in real life, in our industry, the application actually helps, you know, people to commute better. And I think that's the beautiful part of it.

Charlie Rose: There was a giant competition between Uber and Didi in China.

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: So how did you beat them? How did you beat the scary Uber?

Jean Liu: Well, first of all, I should, you know, clarifysomething as China ride share market or China internet market has always been very, very competitive.

Charlie Rose: Yes.

Jean Liu: When we started

Charlie Rose: So you've beaten other people before you got to Uber.

Jean Liu: When we started this business, there were 30 players doing exactly the same thing.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Jean Liu: But we did relatively well or relatively better because --08:05Charlie 

Rose: So how did you do it?

Jean Liu: We understand the local, you know, user's needbetter than others. A lot of times people get carried away by competition. Sometimes competition is so much fun, right.When you talk about winning and the losing, and catch the headline news, everyone is so excited about it. But from my perspective, for our perspective, you know, the realcompetition is how can you serve your customers better, right? Driver or passenger, right. So for our business we see look, there are so many people who can't get a ride share, that's carpool, let's use AI. Let's try carpooling, that's why -- you know, even during the competition, we launched three different new businesses. We see there are people who want to grab a drink after work, but it's extremely dangerous if you, there's a DUI situation.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Jean Liu: So we say we send you a designated

Charlie Rose: A DUI situation.

Jean Liu: Yes, we send you a designated driver to meet youat the bar or at a party and he can drive you back home, so you don't need to drive, right.

Charlie Rose: So you just send a driver.

Jean Liu: We send a driver to you.

Charlie Rose: Take your car here, drive you home.

Jean Liu: Yes, he will drive you home.

Charlie Rose: Drop you off at home, park your car, and then,make his own way back to wherever.

Jean Liu: Exactly. It's better for safety, right.

Charlie Rose: Yeah.

Jean Liu: So you won't hit any passengers on the road, right.So you know, like minibus, how we can, it is a supercarpooling concept. How we can put more people, so everyone can enjoy more affordable ride, you know. So these are the things we innovated or created during the competition.

Charlie Rose: There are wonderful stories about -- because generally so many of the companies are, certainly in your area, in transit, in transportation, have a relationship to the big three companies.

Jean Liu: Sure.

Charlie Rose: Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, correct?

Jean Liu: Yes, in one way or another.

Charlie Rose: Yes.

Jean Liu: Yes, we actually not only just Alibaba and Tencent,we also have very nice relationship with Apple.

Charlie Rose: Oh, Apple.

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: Such nice relationship.

Jean Liu: That is very nice relationship.

Charlie Rose: Signed a billion dollar check to invest in your company.

Jean Liu: Yes, we're thankful for that, and also to SoftBank,to Masai, and also to --

Charlie Rose: I'm going to read this. This is what Tim Cook said about you in Time Magazine 100 list which is an annual list of the people he considers the most influential. Jean Liu is a disrupter and not only through her ambitious effort to change the way people in China commute, travel, and connect with one another, but with Didi Chuxing, the ride sharing, taxi hailing startup, she leads alongside Cheng Wei, its name means "beep beep mobility" in Chinese. Jean has built a transportation platform that offers convenience and flexibility. She and her team are succeeding ride innovative big data algorithms that aim both to improve the efficiency of Didi's service, and so ease the congestion of roadways by analyzing computer patterns the way oceanographic track the cities, Didi may help traffic jams go the way of the flip phone. Is that possible? You can have -- if you succeed, traffic jams will be eliminated because you are eliminating the number of cars.11:26Jean Liu: Not just that. Let me share with you some example.First of all, Tim was really nice to give me those comments.

Charlie Rose: Of course. I would say that too if someone invested a billion dollars in me.

Jean Liu: Actually, you know, we are working with 20 cities in China right now, and these mayors, we're working together on some common project. This one common goal we have together is how can we cut congestion, it's a top problem bothering them every day, so we say let's redesign the traffic signal system and the vehicle length system, because the old system was very outdated and with our new technology we can help with you that.12:05Charlie Rose: With AI and big data.

Jean Liu: With deep learning, everything. And in the test zone, you know, the result is extremely encouraging, after only three months of work. The congestion time got reduced by 20 percent to 40 percent, just after three months of work. Think about it, 20 percent of -- you know, of anyone's time on the road, if you add up that together, that's tremendous. And it's only a short period of time. And you know, when we share this result with other cities, everyone feel wow, let's do this too in our city. We want that too. And you know, when we talk to our partners in Brazil, as you may know, we've invested in seven local champions.

Charlie Rose: 7 what?

Jean Liu: Local champions, we call champions.

Charlie Rose: Right, right, right.

Jean Liu: And they all say why don't you -- you know, come toour city and let's do it together, right, because it cures congestion, it cures pollution, it's good. So we do believe with the ride application of technology we can cure congestion.

Charlie Rose: If you cure congestion are you also curing some of the environmental issues.

Jean Liu: Yes, and with carpooling as you just mentioned, right. You know, we poll 4 million passengers every day and the number is growing very fast. Four million, what does it mean? It means every year that takes away millions of tons of carbon emission when you have -- you know, it is very intuitive. So that is why I think why Tim mentioned about this.

Charlie Rose: One of the other things you do, your company does is that you invest in a lot of startups, too. You make global investments around the world.

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: In terms of people that you believe have a startup that might be successful and have an impact.

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: Is that the selection process? I mean, are you looking for certain kinds of companies you want to invest in other than those that have a very good business model and probability of success?

Jean Liu: Sure. Actually, we are still very focused on solvingthe commute issue, so all the startups --

Charlie Rose: So all the startups have to do with that.

Jean Liu: Yes, that's our mission, we feel.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Jean Liu: You know, we are here to solve the commute issue.So we go around the globe and we see who shares the same passion. Who also wants to solve this issue, who is worried about it day and night like us. And also another perspective is this industry is so young although everyone is talking about the competition and everything, everyone knows so much about this, but people may not know, this industry is so young. The penetration is only one percent. So you know

Charlie Rose: In other words, in terms of the potential market you have only penetrated one percent.

Jean Liu: One percent -- only one percent.

Charlie Rose: That is a good business to be in.

Jean Liu: It is a good business to be in and if we want more people to benefit from the technology, the algorithm, and the good thing about Didi is we are based in China. China is a complex market, so huge and it's also a hard case. Imagine, you know, Beijing is such a mega city and the complications in the calculation, in the algorithm, you know, if we tested the algorithm here, if we test the product here, we can share the best practice with a lot of young companies on other side of the world. And also product wise, for example, the minibus is very well in Brazil. So that's the philosophy of this collaboration which we deeply believe in, that's why, you know, we are going global.

Charlie Rose: So some people have raised the question whether as I mentioned the fact you are investors in other startups.

Jean Liu: Right.

Charlie Rose: Will that in any way distract from your disrupter edge?

Jean Liu: Very interesting, very interesting question. How we see it, again, is you know, this industry grows faster than the regulations.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Jean Liu: And you know then the policies. And in each jurisdiction is all very, very different. So from our perspective, the key is -- you know, at the same time you bring, you know, top-notch disruptive technology but at the same time we need to collaborate as many people as possible. Otherwise this industry won't be sustainable.That's why when we started, we collaborated with taxi industry. That is the difference between us and a lot of others. Because you know, taxi -- there are millions of taxi drivers getting their income from Didi and we charge nothing.We don't charge anything from taxi drivers. We also create our product to tailor make for them.

Charlie Rose: So what you are doing is providing theinformation of people, you are giving them informationwhere there are riders.

Jean Liu: Right, not just that. I give you one example. For example, the taxi drivers, one of their biggest headache, you know what? Is every night the last ride is the biggest problem for them. Because if the last ride is going to the opposite of home, then you know, in Beijing, like say a city, then it will waste them a lot of gas fee to drive empty car back. So a lot of them, in order to save some cost, they actually sleep in the car for the whole night. And the next morning they can pick up passengers. So it's extremely hard for a taxi driver. So we create this "go home" button. You know, the driver say OK, you know, I will go home now, I press this button. So the system only dispatch the passengers on their way home to them and this extremely popular to taxi drivers. So that's --

Charlie Rose: You push that go home button and so thepassengers that know about you, are passengers are on the way to where you are going.

Jean Liu: Yes, yes, so we basically just send a passengerwho's on the way home to the driver, to them. So they like this so much.

Charlie Rose: I would like it, too.

Jean Liu: Yes, so these are the collaborations I'm talking about. And also, other collaboration like, you know, we work with the city mayors on the smart transportation systemwhich we just talked about, with local champions. So we believe in this. So I don't think there's a conflict between being disruptive technology provider, at the same timecollaborate with others.

Charlie Rose: OK. China -- well, first this, there was news today or yesterday that Uber's run into a bit of problem in London. What does that say to you?

Jean Liu: Yeah, I just learned it from the newspaper as well. I understand Uber is appealing.

Charlie Rose: Yes.

Jean Liu: Formally.

Charlie Rose: But is this an ongoing conflict between ride sharing companies and local municipalities?

Jean Liu: Right.

Charlie Rose: I mean is that is always a relationship that has some tension to it or not?

Jean Liu: Well, my first, you know, sense is that there is in different jurisdictions, the rules are very different. And we first need to understand it. And secondly there is always some common ground between us and the policy makers, what is our common ground here. I think, at least, for the cities in China what do we find is, we -- both sides worry about congestion, both sides worry about pollution. Both sides worry about safety, right -- you know, us and the policy makers. So let's do something together. For example, in China you may just know Chinese government is promoting the electric vehicle because it is more environmental friendly. So we go talk to the city mayors saying look, Didi isthe largest fleet of electric vehicles globally. You know why, because drivers love it. Drivers drive ten times a day. They think the cost saved from, you know, buying an EV makes so much sense.

Charlie Rose: Electric vehicle.

Jean Liu: Electric vehicle, makes so much sense. They don't need to spend money on too much gas, right. So we talk to the city policy maker saying let's both promote the EV in this city, right, in this platform. So there are a lot of common ground things we can reach and I think I'm being optimistic in I do believe technology in the long run will transform the transportation industry.

Charlie Rose: Meaning autonomy?

Jean Liu: Autonomy is, you know, a very popular topic. I do think, you know, let's look at the purpose of autonomy. Why autonomy, right, why not with a very good human driver? I think the key purpose here is really about safety and I believe in it because there are 1.3 million people die every year from road accidents.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Jean Liu: That's more than drugs and wars.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Jean Liu: And it's not supposed to be like that. I think 30 years down the road when we look back we will probably feel that is ridiculous.

Charlie Rose: What were we thinking about?

Jean Liu: Yeah, what were we thinking about, and you know,when we talk about autonomous driving, it could make driving much safer. But that's a lot of people believe in, but I do believe it's a progress. We need to, you know, make sure it is a gradual progress and it's well tested. It could be geo fencing some area to test it and then let's bring into, you know, bigger market. But let's make sure safety, you know, is the top priority. Rather than bring some technology in.

Charlie Rose: Right, but that is an issue that can probably be handled, I assume, and that we are going to simply see moreautonomy, more driverless cars on the part of manufacturers, and as well as people who use cars like you.

Jean Liu: Right, I think that -- will be the trend, that could be the trend, yes.

Charlie Rose: Is it going to be slower than we imagined, do you think, because of conquering safety issues and other factors?21:50Jean Liu: Yeah, I think -- you know, I think people should bemore, you know, focusing on how safe it is than how soon it can come out. Because even, you know, it comes out, I think in certain areas it can be well used, for example, logistic, right, when it's a geo fencing area. You know we can --

Charlie Rose: So how much are you using it now?

Jean Liu: No, we are not using.

Charlie Rose: You haven't conquered those questions yet.

Jean Liu: Yes. Actually for us, but I want to share with you something what we do for safety is, you know, as I mentioned, road average is 1.6 deaths per hundred million miles -- 1.6 deaths per hundred million miles but our platform is .6 deaths per hundred million miles. So it is significantly lower. Yeah, it's like a third -- 60 percent, yes, yes, yes. So what we do is there is, you know, safe drive technology, we apply, and also, you know, passengers will rate drivers. When there is a dangerous driver, they will give them a very low score, so we remind this driver you cannot do this anymore. And you know, there is a system to risk management for drivers. So that helps a lot. So I think this should be a progressive -- you know, progressive process instead of disruptive, that switch to autonomous driving.That's just too dangerous.

Charlie Rose: Your dad was president or founder of Lenovo.

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: Which later, as everybody knows of a certain age they bought IBM's ThinkPad. Was it destiny for you to go into technology?

Jean Liu: Well, I think it was always a calling for me. I have to admit. You know, when I grew up --

Charlie Rose: Do you think you are in technology rather than transportation.

Jean Liu: Well, I actually think I'm in both.

Charlie Rose: Yes.

Jean Liu: I think I am definitely in both because this industry is not just about technology, it is about transporting real people.

Charlie Rose: Right, right.

Jean Liu: It's not like up in the cloud, internet type of technology, so I'm definitely in both. But there is always a calling. I was a computer science major myself, so you know,it's always part of me.

Charlie Rose: Where did you go to college?

Jean Liu: Peking University and Harvard.

Charlie Rose: Harvard Business or Harvard Computer Science?

Jean Liu: Computer Science.

Charlie Rose: How is China doing in terms of offering women opportunities in technology? Is it better than Silicon Valley?

Jean Liu: Yeah, I think there are a lot of common challenges.And I will speak for my own experience. I wouldn't say it is a very easy journey, to be very frank, because there are some culture issue behind. And when I was -- when I just started my career, I was always shy one. You know, I can do a lot of work but I decide I don't want to speak at a meeting, I want to sit in a corner --

Charlie Rose: When did you lose that?

Jean Liu: I worry so much about how other people who look at me will judge me. And but I'm very grateful, actually, in technology world, and also in business world, there are a lot of very good female mentors. And also I had some personal experience. I got cancer two years ago. And you know, after that, I figured one thing, life is so short. And you know, I think there's a lot of things we need to compromise in this life, but don't compromise who you really are. So that actually helped me to feel relieved and I think that a lot of women actually shared that problem same as me, so that is why in Didi we formed Didi's Women's Network. Actually we get, our women employees, very good mentors to share, you know, so that they can go to and get some good advice. And I do believe as long as you can be yourself and you can really not limit your potential, there is a lot of things we can achieve. So I am actually speaking from my own experience, it's actually a learning journey. But it's also very rewarding.

Charlie Rose: Is there still a struggle with cancer?

Jean Liu: I actually -- yes, thank you. I came here for treatment in San Francisco.

Charlie Rose: Yes.

Jean Liu: It was very good. I took -- actually, for those three months, I took Lyft most of the time everywhere.

Charlie Rose: And then you invested in Lyft.

Jean Liu: Yes, actually.

Charlie Rose: You do?

Jean Liu: Yes, my mom became a huge fan because she doesn't need to use any ride share back at home but here we have nobody. So it is very good experience. And yeah, so I'm cured, yeah, thank you.

Charlie Rose: OK, great. You are cancer free now.

Jean Liu: Yes, I'm cancer free now.

Charlie Rose: Very good. One last question about China today.

Jean Liu: Yes, sure.

Charlie Rose: Bill Gates was on a morning program I do.

Jean Liu: Sure.

Charlie Rose: And we were talking about how, you know, still there is a belief that America is the most innovative country in the world. Some of that comes from Silicon Valley, and it's sort of been part of the American sort of idea of exceptionalism. But China has become much more than simply copying what other people are doing. Has China in a sense really become more innovative and how did they do it?Because it was more of a cultural factor as well.

Jean Liu: Sure, sure. Well, I am big believer in innovation coming out of China these days. Technology is completely transforming China in my view. 30 years ago, as I mentioned in Bloomberg Forum, you know, when I grew up, I saw mules, camels on the street as part of the transportation. Now you see Beijing as a modern city and you see people rarely use wallet even, right, mobile payment everywhere. It is a crazy pace of change. I think part of the reason is China is so huge and it has enough market to energize real innovation because there are just so many people wanting different things. You know, the other day -- I just want to share with you, you know, a story. The other day, because we have this homework for senior executive to drive and pick up passengers from the road, I couldn't drive so I was partnered with my colleague. So on the way, we picked up this young guy. And he hopped in and my colleague introduced me to him. Said this is president of Didi. The guy didn't get impressed at all. (LAUGHTER) He said, can you give me some coupon if you are the president? (LAUGHTER) I said, OK, I can give you, but we are selecting feedback, I want to ask you some questions. So we had this little conversation. So he told me he is a junior year college student and he earned some good income from tutoring, but he spends it all. He doesn't care to take subway or buses like other students. He just wants to take a private ride, it's so much more convenient. And, you know, he shops everything online. He didn't even have a -- he doesn't even have a credit card, but he used the credit system by AliPay. So, this is the new generation of China, right? And, you know, the technology empowers this new generation to spend, to live a better quality of life. And you can say -- I think, you know, there is real innovation coming from it. And, you know, to our example as well, what we talked about a lot of innovation, we have created in our industry, so I think that's the future.That's definitely -- the technology is definitely transforming China, but it's also, you know, transforming other side of the world, too. We invest in southeast Asia, a similar dynamic.You know, there is a lot of innovation. And, you know, Brazil and here in the States. So, I do believe innovation can come from any where. Let's not say innovation --

Charlie Rose: Sure.

Jean Liu: Yes.

Charlie Rose: Nobody has a lock on it and there's no reasonthat any community can't develop the kinds of drive to change.

Jean Liu: Yes. If you have so many people wanting to have a better life, there will be innovation coming out of it.

Charlie Rose: It's great to have you here.

Jean Liu: Thank you very much.

Charlie Rose: Thank you so much.

Jean Liu: Thank you, Charlie.

Charlie Rose: Pleasure.