Didi, the Chinese transportation app, has halted its plans to launch in Europe. Uber’s rival had planned to reach the markets of Western Europe, but for now that landing is not going to take place, not in the short term: Didi has already contacted the team in charge of European expansion to assign new roles or eliminate potential redundancies.
It is a not entirely unexpected decision since the West has Chinese tech giants in its sights and even China has recently pushed for data processing laws (note: at the time of writing this article has not been published , but here it would be good to link the one entitled ‘China will protect the confidentiality of personal data by law’) .
Last year, for example, Huawei was banned from the UK’s 5G infrastructure and is under investigation by the British National Cyber Security Centre. Something similar happened to the firm in the United States, where it had to face restrictions.
also tik Tok was the subject of investigation by the Donald Trump administration for his alleged relationship with the Chinese communist government. The Joe Biden administration has not logically followed the same line, but it has maintained pressure against Chinese companies -in addition to increasing scrutiny of large American technology companies, such as Facebook recently-.
For his part, Didi has run into problems with the Chinese government when Beijing has tried to legislate on the processing of data by companies. It is this same administration that determined that the Didi Global chauffeur-driven tourist vehicle application had illegally collected personal data from its users and that is why it was removed from the application stores for smartphones.
The company has not commented on the decision to halt its entry into Europe, but it did release the following statement recently through a spokesperson: “We continue to explore additional new markets, collaborate with shareholders in each of them, and be thoughtful about when to introduce our products.” services. As soon as we have more news about additional markets, we will be happy to share them.”
For now, in addition to being active in China, Didi has expanded its global presence by entering countries such as Kazakhstan, Ecuador or South Africa, so it is logical that it also wants to be present in markets where these transport services are used more, such as Europe or North America.
