The disruptions affected some of the app’s 400 million users, as well as drivers across China, including in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has reported a widespread service breakdown affecting users across major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, according to the company and its users.
The Beijing-based company apologised for the app outage late on Monday, blaming it on a “system failure” in a post published on Didi’s account on Chinese microblogging service Weibo. The statement came hours after the service disruption affected some of its 400 million users in China, as well as drivers.
Didi was the first Big Tech company to undergo a cybersecurity review by the Chinese government, which came shortly after its ill-fated New York listing in June 2021. It had been banned from signing on new users for 18 months until January this year, after it received a US$1.2 billion fine from the government over data violations. Despite the punishment, the company remains China’s most popular ride-hailing service.
Eighty per cent of Chinese users surveyed by market intelligence service Statista earlier this year said they would choose Didi over similar services from operators including Meituan and HelloGlobal.
