BEIJING, China — As it tries to calm a social media frenzy sparked by the Cyberspace Administration of China’s announcement that it has launched an investigation into the country’s dominant ride-hailer, Didi Global said on Saturday that none of its data has been leaked to the United States, where it made the year’s largest IPO earlier this week. The disclosure by the cyberspace administration, which came just days after Didi raised $4.4 billion in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, sparked widespread social media speculation that data had been stolen in the United States. The probe is being conducted “to preserve national security,” according to the government. Didi Vice President Li Min claimed in a post on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, that reports that Didi is providing data to the US are a malicious lie. Didi’s official account retweeted the post. President Xi Jinping and his administration are tightening their hold on China’s tech industries, according to Li. All data collected on Didi’s users in China is stored on domestic servers, and the company will never transmit such data to the US. Alibaba Group Holding announced earlier this year that it had accepted a record fine after regulators found it had broken competition regulations. Didi is being investigated under national security and cyber security regulations. Li did not specify what kind of inquiry the cyberspace administration is undertaking in his Weibo post. Didi’s major shareholder is SoftBank Group, while Uber Technologies, a competitor in the United States, is also a shareholder./n
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