How China’s tech scene is shaped by the government

A look at how the Chinese authorities shapes the country’s tech industry

Reading Time:3 minutes

How China’s tech scene is shaped by the government

Published: 10:30am, 10 Jul 2018Updated: 8:31am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

In most parts of the world, it’s unimaginable for a popular app or an online trend to disappear overnight just because the government wants it to.

In February this year, China’s hottest mobile trend was HQ Trivia-like quiz apps. More than a dozen sprung up in a month. The best-performing ones had millions of people tuning in daily, with the record of 4.3 million for a single game. Developers were excited -- one believed that they were “the future of television”.

And then it came to a halt. Right before Chinese New Year’s Eve, they all stopped operating after the state’s media watchdog told 17 trivia app makers to clean up their act, because they were “attracting eyeballs and traffic with abnormally high prizes” and “confusing junk information with knowledge.”

Quiz apps never made a comeback after that.

How people are cheating in China's live trivia games

This isn’t unusual at all in China -- even though people don’t see a tech CEO questioned by lawmakers in front of the whole country, the products and services they use are constantly scrutinized by the state.

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