Why does China hate email?

Emailing people in China can be a frustrating experience for one simple reason: You rarely get a reply.

In the West, emails are more likely to be overlooked because they are buried under other emails. China, however, just seems to dislike the entire concept, whether for business or missives between friends who met during their travels.

But there's a reason for this, which is tangled up in the history of China’s internet and the rise of one of the largest tech companies in the world.

At the turn of the millennium, email in the West was no longer something exotic. It had become as much of a social expectation as having a telephone number. By the time email celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2001, nearly every office had an email address.

“One factor was that from a very early time in the adoption of the internet in China (it) was dominated by very young people, many of whom were not working in white collar office environments,” said Kaiser Kuo, former international communications director for Baidu and now editor-at-large of SupChina. “Their main attraction to the internet wasn't productivity; they were more focused on its social possibilities.”