China’s sudden regulatory action against Didi, the newly-listed ride-hailing company, is the latest in a series of increasingly stringent measures taken against the country's flourishing technology sector. Even if these steps have some justification on security and anti-monopoly grounds, they will likely diminish the appetite of overseas investors for Chinese startups and deter the Chinese diaspora from starting new ventures in mainland China.
In turn, such outcomes will undermine the "community of common destiny" that has propelled China's technology sector into its leading position globally.
For two decades, beginning in the late 1990s, China seemed to have stumbled on the perfect formula for nurturing some of the world’s most successful internet companies. The government spent billions of dollars modernizing the country’s telecommunications infrastructure. Meanwhile, technically and culturally savvy entrepreneurs — both at home and among the Chinese d
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