BEIJING: Didi Global Inc (DIDI.N), China’s ride-hailing behemoth, retains all customer and road data on Chinese servers, and it is “absolutely not possible” for the business to send data to the US, a top company executive said on Saturday. After charges were made on China’s Twitter-like Weibo site, Didi Vice President Li Min stated the company will sue any social media users who claimed the corporation transferred data during its recent initial public offering (IPO).
Just two days after the firm began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, China’s cyberspace agency announced on Friday that it has launched an inquiry against Didi to protect national security and the public interest.
The news of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) inquiry, as well as the agency’s decision to prevent Didi from registering new customers while it is investigated, knocked 5% off Didi’s stock on Friday. “Like many other overseas-listed Chinese companies, Didi stores all domestic user data on Chinese servers; it is impossible to send data to the US,” Li wrote on Weibo. Didi, which operates in China and over 15 other countries, collects massive amounts of real-time mobility data every day. It makes use of some of the information for autonomous driving and traffic analysis.
Will Cheng founded the company in 2012, and it has already received regulatory scrutiny in China over its safety and operating license. find out more “I’m not sure what the final implications will be,” Sumeet Singh, an Aequitas Research director who publishes on Smartkarma, told Reuters on Saturday, before Li’s post, “but regulatory crackdown has been an ongoing concern even before the listing, with Didi already having been called in by the regulators twice.” “Stopping the company from accepting new users for a period of time shouldn’t hurt too much because the company already has a market share of more than 80% to begin with, as long as it isn’t extended for an extended period of time.” The cybersecurity agency didn’t say how long the inquiry would last or disclose any other information. Didi announced on Friday that it would conduct a complete review of cybersecurity threats and will fully cooperate with the appropriate government body. It also stated that it was running regularly, with the exception of the suspension of new user registrations in China./n
