American ride-hailing company Uber is in merger talks with its counterpart in China, according to Chinese media reports.

For the past three months, Uber has been negotiating with Yidao Yongche and is likely to finalize the merger this week, TechWeb reported on Tuesday (March 17, 2015), citing unnamed sources.

But for "unknown reasons", the two companies have decided not to make an immediate announcement, the sources said.

Both Uber and Yidao Yongche are not available to comment.

Yidao Yongche is known as "China's Uber". Launched in early 2011, it has "tens of millions" of users in 76 cities across China, its co-founder and Vice President Zhu Yueyi said in a January media interview. The company claims to own the biggest market share in China's business car rental space.

Uber entered the Chinese market in February 2014, at a time when two local taxi-hailing services, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, had already gained popularity.

Uber's strength in China was enhanced in December following a strategic investment by Baidu, one of the three top Internet companies in China.

Interestingly, the other top two Internet companies, Alibaba and Tencent, are behind Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache, respectively.

Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache announced a surprising merging deal on February 14 of this year, a gesture that market research analysts interpreted as an effort to compete against Uber.

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