[guiltygatorade]

There's no doubt that Jack Ma is smart and hard working. But he and his success is also a product of his environment. I don't have any direct evidence but no companies in China achieves the kind of success Tencent or Alibaba does without some sort of government officials silently nodding their heads behind them.

That means they're likely complicit in any information gathering the government wants to perform on its citizens as a precondition to their continued operations. The Chinese government is probably all too happy to see these "monopolies" that are effectively playing ball with the government, since the more users that adopt their platform, the more data they have on their citizens.

And this is not even touching on how they can exert themselves on these Chinese internet companies to shape the conversations that are happening online.

Of course you probably already know all this :P

[stuffedBelly]

The younger generation (born in 80s/90s) in China is usually aware of the amount of censorship imposed and take the government policies and billionaires' success stories with a grain of salt. There are smart ways to get their voices out through music, art projects and onion articles, and escaping the censorship has become a fun game to play (hidden political memes are everywhere right under the big brother's eyes).

[kawera]

Exactly. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-tech-giants-have-a-secon...