China’s ride-hailing giant Didi has resumed the registration of new users on its app, eight months after it was suspended by Chinese authorities.
Didi often referred to as “China’s Uber”, has for some time been awaiting approval to resume onboarding users on its platform, as a key step to return to normal business since the app was banned.
Having carefully cooperated with the Chinese cybersecurity review, the authorities have lifted the ban by granting them the go-ahead to resume new user registrations and downloads of its apps in China as soon as this week.
The latest move comes as Chinese policymakers are seeking to restore private sector confidence and counting on the
technology industry to help spur economic activity that has been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company said via a statement, “Our company has carefully cooperated with the country’s cybersecurity review, seriously dealt with the security problems found in the review, and carried out comprehensive certification for more than one year.
“Didi would also take effective measures to ensure platform safety and data security, and as well safeguard national cyberspace security”.
Investors King understands that trouble started for Didi in July 2021, when Chinese authorities ordered the country’s app store to remove Didi’s app, citing reasons that the platform was illegally collecting users’ data.
25 of its mobile apps were taken down, registration of new members was suspended, and it was slammed with a fine of &1.2 billion over data security.
The ban on Didi occurred less than a week after it went public on the New York stock exchange, in the biggest U.S. share offering by a Chinese company since Alibaba debuted in 2014.
Founded in 2012, Didi is China’s dominant ride-hailing service with 550 million annual active users globally. In the first quarter (Q1) of 2021, the app had 156 million monthly users, well above Uber’s 98 million in the same period.
The company handled 25 million rides a day in China, during the same period while Uber did 16 million.