For Beijing ‘data security’ now trumps the old desire to have its tech firms seen as global champions
It’s tech, it’s Chinese and it looks a bit like Uber, so it must be hugely valuable. That, we must assume, was the analysis of those US investors who piled into Didi last week as the ride-sharing app listed in New York at the mighty valuation of $80bn (£60bn). If anybody read the warning in the IPO prospectus about regulatory risks in China, they probably dismissed it as boilerplate stuff.
They’re wiser now. The scary-sounding Cyberspace Administration of China has clobbered Didi by ordering that its app be removed from domestic online stores, a move the company said with brilliant understatement “may have an adverse impact” on its revenues in China, its biggest market by far. Cue a 25% plunge in the share price at one point on Tuesday, only the fourth day of trading, a farcical state of affairs.
