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Didi Global saga shows China's tech behemoths must first answer to Beijing

Didi is by most measures an appealing success story. The firm controls almost the entire ride-hailing market in China, and counts SoftBank Group Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. as major shareholders

Photo: Bloomberg
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Photo: Bloomberg

Sofia Horta e Costa and Kari Lindberg | Bloomberg
To the world’s investors, the saga over Didi Global Inc. has made China’s biggest tech firms a riskier bet as President Xi Jinping seeks to control one of the country’s most valuable resources: Big data.
 
Didi is by most measures an appealing success story. The firm controls almost the entire ride-hailing market in China, and counts SoftBank Group Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. as major shareholders. Didi was actually profitable in the first quarter, a rarity for the industry. Its initial public offering last week was the second-biggest in the U.S. by a company based in China, and it was