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Does China actually "force" things to be done? As far as I can tell, in the realm of technology at least, the government mostly just sets direction and then lets private capital do its thing, albeit without letting power concentrate in a way that subverts government.

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When they want something to be done, it just gets done. I guess that is the point; I was working in China when one year there were 0 electric scooters; the next year, only. Gas scooters were forbidden overnight basically and that was that. Try doing that over here...

Hilarious. Such efficiency, not even the free markets can catch up!

Also, curious: did you not like it there and left, or was that a fixed-duration contract or something?

I loved it (still go on holiday), but the sentiment changed (during/after HK + Covid) and clients started to demand non-china produced electronics so we had to leave.

Yes, see Great Chinese Firewall. Providing a VPN access to civilians is a criminal offense in PRC. This is not the same as forcing companies to use domestic software, but to illustrate the ability of Chinese government to implement draconian limitations in general.

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