Didi’s latest murder case shines a light on crimes committed by rogue drivers and vetting procedures

It was just past 10am on a Friday morning in late August, and a 16-year-old Yantai resident surnamed Zhang decided to go to the bank. So she hailed a taxi through the popular Didi ride-booking app, China’s biggest ride-booking platform, and soon received a notification that a “Master Sun” was en route. Minutes later, he called to confirm the pickup point.

She got into the taxi, which turned out to be unlicensed. The driver’s name was not Sun, as the Didi app had showed, but Zhang Weixing, 36, and he told the teenager how much he liked her and that he wanted to go to the seaside with her. She told him to stop the car, but he locked the doors and drove on.

Zhang parked close to a Crowne Plaza hotel near the sea and forced the girl to walk with him by the promenade. When she said she wanted to go home, he agreed, and the two of them got back into the car. He drove east to a car park, stopped in a corner, and dragged her to the back seat and raped her. Security camera footage showed Zhang’s car leaving half an hour later at 11.13am.

That was two years ago, and the related details are taken from official court documents. Zhang was convicted of rape and sentenced to four years in prison.

Zhang’s case is one of at least a dozen sexual assault cases in which Didi drivers have been convicted in the past three-and-a-half years, according to a review of official court verdicts by the South China Morning Post. The keywords “Didi” and “rape” or “sexual assault” were used in the public records search, and the results were reviewed to exclude those where the app was not central to connecting perpetrator and victim.

Didi’s safety record has come under intense scrutiny in recent days after a driver using the company’s Hitch service confessed to raping and killing a 20-year-old woman. The tragedy comes just months after a 21-year-old flight attendant in Henan province was killed by her Didi driver in May.