Didi halts expansion after woman’s murder

Chinese car-hailing giant pledges safety will be its ‘single most important performance indicator’

THE Chinese car-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has halted its relentless expansion after the murder of a passenger raised major safety concerns.

Didi, which is known as Beijing’s answer to Uber, has conquered cities in many emerging markets and chased its US rival out of China two years ago.

But it has become the target of national outrage after a 20-year-old woman using the app was raped and murdered in the eastern city of Wenzhou on Friday. It was the second death involving a female passenger in three months. The driver, who had been the subject of a sexual harassment complaint, has been arrested.

The attack has sparked a reckoning for Didi after years of growth that has seen it valued at more than $55bn (£42bn) and become a candidate for a stock market flotation next year.

The company said in a statement yesterday: “Our vanity overtook our original beliefs. We raced non-stop riding on the force of breathless expansion and capital through these few years, but this has no meaning in such a tragic loss of life.

“Throughout the company we start to question if we are doing the right thing; or even whether we have the right values. There is an enormous amount of self-doubt, guilt and soulsearching.

“The only thing we can do at this moment of pain is to face the pain and take on our responsibility. Not a single second shall be lost in solving the problems with our full effort. To bring back what we were here for from day one, this is the only meaningful kind of condolence we could offer to the victim.”

Didi said it would no longer prioritise scale and growth but would instead make safety its “single most important performance indicator”. The company had already suspended its “Hitch” service, which allows drivers to pick up passengers on their daily commute, and fired two executives.

It promised to introduce new safety features to its app and to work closely with police to protect passengers.

Didi has drawn scrutiny from the Chinese government, which said the company has “unshirkable responsibility” for the incident.

Celebrities and Chinese social media users have pledged to delete the application, in an echo of the “Delete Uber” campaign that saw thousands of users leave the transport app last year in a dispute over striking taxi drivers.

Didi, founded in 2012, fought a war of attrition with Uber in China that saw both companies spend billions. In 2016, Uber sold its Chinese operations to Didi in exchange for an 18pc stake.

Didi has continued to expand internationally and has made steps into some Western markets. It launched in Australia earlier this year and secured a $500m investment from the US owner of travel website Booking.com.