When Pony Ma, head of the Chinese internet powerhouse Tencent, attended a group meeting with Premier Li Keqiang in 2014, he complained that many local governments had banned ride-sharing apps installed on smartphones. Mr. Li immediately told a few ministers to investigate the matter and report back to him. When President Xi Jinping met with global tech leaders in Seattle in 2015, Didi’s founder, Cheng Wei, then 32 years old, joined Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Apple’s Tim Cook and Mr. Ma at the gathering. But the relationship between Beijing and the tech sector has splintered badly in the past year. Didi is now a target of the government’s regulatory wrath.

Source: New York Times July 19, 2021 03:56 UTC