For Didi, once hailed as an innovator and disruptor in China’s stable transportation sector, it has been a rapid fall from grace. The company was considered the pride of China’s brave and valuable start-up scene in 2016, when it beat its US rival Uber to buy the company’s Chinese operations. Its executives then promised that the data it collected would be used to avoid traffic jams and eventually help develop driverless cars.
As Beijing has asserted greater control over Internet companies like Didi, it has sought to shape a private sector more in line with the Communist Party’s focus on political security and the fulfillment of its policy goals. Popular attitudes about China’s technology sector, once an emblem of future success, also appear to have changed.
After the punishment was announced, several teachers and tech commentators took to Weibo to call for even harsher punishments.
Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University, called the revelations of Didi’s violations “really shocking!” Didi “ignored national security, ignored national laws and ignored citizens’ privacy,” he added. Others went further, questioning whether a company that endangered national security should be allowed to exist.
In the short term, the government will likely give in to Didi, allowing it to restore its apps to stores. But the company will still have to show it has addressed the regulator’s concerns about data security and other issues, said Linghao Bao, an analyst at Trivium China, a China-focused policy research outfit.
“The big tech platforms are taking a break because the economy isn’t doing so well. Regulators are moving from a campaign-style crackdown to more rules-based governance,” he said. “But technological regulation is here to stay for the long term.”