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Exclusive | Didi’s business slows from break-neck pace as on-site probes by China’s cybersecurity regulators gum up operations

  • Employees of Didi Chuxing have been forced to address technical demands from regulators as cybersecurity probe drags on
  • The review has forced the ride-hailing giant to make the investigation its top priority as it seeks to get its app back into app stores

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A driver of Chinese ride-hailing service Didi drives with a phone showing a navigation map on Didi's app, in Beijing on July 5, 2021. Photo: Reuters
The Chinese government’s unprecedented probes into Didi-Chuxing, also involving public security investigators, have gummed up business operations at the platform that dominated 90 per cent of the country’s ride-hailing industry, according to several employees.
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Engineers and product managers at the Beijing company, whose smartphone apps were removed from Android and Apple app stores in early July, are now busy writing up patches to close what Chinese regulators called technical loopholes in Didi’s data management system, according to staff who spoke on condition of anonymity. Several business units of the company have lowered their performance targets for 2021, which were set in January at the start of the financial year, because those goals were no longer realistic, given the review of the company’s business on July 16.

Investigators, who sequestered themselves into Didi’s head office in the Zhongguancun Software Park in the northwestern corner of the Chinese capital, have called mid-level staff in for hours of questioning, even on weekends and at short notice, employees said. Engineers have completed the rectification of the data management loopholes, according to staff members familiar with the matter.

The change shows how the core business of the dominant company in the world’s largest ride-hailing market – with 493 million monthly active customers and 13 million active drivers – is changing as it accedes to the rectification demands by China’s antitrust regulators. Didi raised regulators wrath when it rushed to raise US$4.4 billion in New York at the end of June, ignoring their warnings.
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Part of the company’s rectification process involves addressing issues authorities see with its management of the data it collects from users and mapping, which must be corrected before Didi is allowed back on China’s Android and Apple app stores.

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