A price-fixing monopoly in the driving school industry has been exposed: 110,000 schools engaged in cutthroat competition, while associations orchestrated price hikes, hindering auto consumption and requiring crackdowns.
When the State Administration for Market Regulation publicly listed the Bazhong driving school monopoly case for investigation, exposing the dark insider story of how twelve local driving schools, sheltered by the industry association, suddenly jacked up training fees by more than double, the public suddenly realized that this service sector—which should have been fully competitive and tied to everyday life—had long been woven into an airtight harvesting network by a local interest alliance. The forced hike from the original people-friendly price of one to two thousand yuan to four thousand yuan, a coordinated price increase orchestrated by the local association itself under the guise of "industry self-discipline," is far more than just collusion among a few driving schools—it is the inevitable backlash of unchecked franchising of public resources in lower-tier markets.
Reviewing the frequent driving school monopoly cases across the country in recent years, the underlying operating logic is almost identical. The driving training industry naturally carries strong regional entry barriers and capital-heavy characteristics. The scarcity of training grounds, instructor vehicle quotas, and exam slots provides a natural breeding ground for collusion among players. In relatively closed county-level economies in the southwest and northwest, some local industry associations have morphed into "underground cartels" for local capital to monopolize the market.
By uniformly setting minimum fee floors and jointly boycotting outside capital and low-price competitors, they forcibly stripped consumers of their right to choose, driving compliant market mechanisms into complete paralysis.
Examining this seemingly vast industry through the macro-level business registration records aggregated by Tianyancha paints a stark picture of extreme structural imbalance. Tianyancha Professional Edition data shows that there are currently over 113,000 driving training-related enterprises nationwide in active or ongoing operation, with registrations hitting a historic peak in 2025, and Guangdong, Shandong, and Jiangsu provinces accounting for a massive share of the volume.
However, the vast majority of these hundreds of thousands of driving school entities scattered across the country are mired in the quagmire of homogeneous, cutthroat competition.
A large number of small and medium-sized driving schools lacking core teaching quality and scale advantages, when squeezed by rising site rents and fuel costs, are unable to boost profits through refined operations. Instead, they are easily lured by the "price alliance" of local associations. Coordinated price hikes have become their collective refuge for survival in the zero-sum game of a shrinking market, and this vicious cycle of "bad money driving out good" has directly squeezed compliant, high-quality driving schools that truly prioritize service and reputation out of the local market.
Even more critically, as the absolute "first starting point" of the entire automotive consumption chain, the irrational surge in driving training prices is precisely undermining macro-level consumption-stimulation policies.
As a pillar of the national economy, the automotive industry has seen continuous policy pushes from both national and local governments in recent years—such as auto subsidies for rural areas and trade-in programs—aimed at fully revitalizing vehicle market activity in lower-tier markets. Yet, when young people face the first hurdle of getting a driver's license being artificially doubled, the high sunk costs directly extinguish their initial desire to subsequently purchase new cars, engage in routine maintenance, and buy auto insurance.
The high wall erected by the driving school monopoly at the starting point acts like an invisible dam, severing the consumption momentum flowing down the automotive industry chain.
Relying solely on after-the-fact administrative fines cannot possibly eradicate these deeply entrenched regional monopoly tumors. To break these price alliances disguised under the banner of associations, it is essential to push market regulation, transport administration, and antitrust enforcement down to the grassroots level, thoroughly severing the covert ties between industry associations and local interest groups. Only by making the rogue driving schools that dare to collude and manipulate prices pay the legal price of financial ruin can the contaminated driving training ecosystem be pushed back onto the track of fair competition, truly clearing the blockage at the starting point for the broader automotive consumption market in lower-tier areas.
