Would disagree on all services being of inferior quality. I think WeChat is better than WhatsApp. You can do everything and yet—it is still a straightforward, easy to use, Chat app.

My last visit to China in 2019 felt like stepping into the future: You can do anything using apps, even buy a bottle of soda at a vending machine or pay for vegetables from a street vendor. I wouldn't call that lower quality, quite the contrary actually in terms of ubiquity and functionality. Of course most people in the west wouldn't know that as the Chinese service providers do not expand as much overseas, but they're on a whole other level there in terms of technological adoption.

> but of course they were (and are) of a lower quality

[citation needed]

true, but to be fair: seems like it worked out pretty well for china...

It worked out pretty well for politicians and those who work in the tech sector. Worked out terribly for the rest of citizens.

[citation needed]

> All of this is similar to what China did back in the day.

In what way is it similar, I'm not seeing it? When did China introduce something like GDPR and how did it help foster an ecosystem of their own services?

At first, western services were banned using laws similar to what some countries in the EU have (like how some tweets are unavailable in some European countries for disputing the holocaust, etc). Also: https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/26/germany-considers-bannin...

Now they have pushed something very similar to the GDPR. More info about these two things here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China#L...

So it is not similar at all? I see no relationship one can draw between GDPR and Chines censorship of the internet and how it came to be.