China Creates ‘Strong Nation’ App as Data Regime Tightens

tech.hindustantimes.com:

China plans to launch a government-backed app to integrate a variety of services including ride-hailing, a sign of more state involvement in a sector wracked by controversy.

Called “Strong Nation Transport,” the app will target government and state enterprise employees, several media outlets including the Beijing Daily reported. 

It's unclear whether the app's availability will widen, or eventually include Didi Global Inc.'s Chuxing service, by far the country's dominant ride-hailing platform. Beijing has been wary of the reams of data that mobile app operators like Didi are amassing, everything from online activity to the movements of individuals and government officials. That concern was a key factor behind the government's decision to launch a probe into Didi in 2021, and establish an over-arching framework to control the flow of sensitive information nationwide.

Didi this week secured the green light to resume signing up new users, suggesting the worst is over for a ride-hailing giant that symbolized Beijing's bruising campaign to rein in its powerful internet industry. But many of its apps — wiped from mobile stores at the start of the investigation — have yet to reappear.

The team behind the project has vowed “maximum protection of users' data security and privacy,” the Beijing Daily reported, a line that made it into many Chinese media reports on the app. The aim is to help resolve issues of data security as well as “disorderly expansion” in the ride-hailing industry, a term Xi Jinping's administration has often used to signal the need to rein in increasingly powerful internet giants.

But several prominent news outlets later cited the transport ministry as well as Xuexi Qiangguo — the team behind a separate propaganda