Didi shows China’s tech giants must first answer to Beijing

To the world’s investors, the saga over Didi Global Inc. has made China’s biggest tech firms a riskier bet as President Xi Jinping seeks to control one of the country’s most valuable resources: Big data.

Didi is by most measures an appealing success story. The firm controls almost the entire ride-hailing market in China, and counts SoftBank Group Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. as major shareholders. Didi was actually profitable in the first quarter, a rarity for the industry. Its initial public offering last week was the second-biggest in the U.S. by a company based in China, and it was well received. Didi sold 317 million shares — about 10% more than originally planned.