And there were some debates about why China could produce some big internet players and eventually it was generally accepted that for one China has a big, or is THE biggest single language market and the other one was because in the early 90s or 200s China's authorities, who were mostly older guys in their 40s or 50s and didn't know anything of internet at the time so they didn't regulate it but let China's and overseas players compete. It was then so many talented people returned from silicon valley like Charles Zhang and Robin Zhang and also some local guys like Jack Ma and Pony Ma of Tencent kicked off their startups. And it was those local guys who grew really big because they knew China better.

The local start ups even couldn't list in China's stock exchanges but had to go list in Nasdaq, HKEx or NYSE.

It was only when China's younger regulators took power they started to setup the GFW and all other policies. Until then it was wild west.

Korea has KakaoTalk that's undefeated as the defacto chat app (and now search engine and payment provider). It's not doing well in every other place except Korea.

Japan has LINE as it's primary messenger, payment app, etc. It has some foot in other south-east asian countries but the strongpoint is still Japan.