TBF it took China decades to centralize the data. Back in the 2010s you can technically marry two persons in different provinces because the system was fragmented along the provinces. I think they finally solved the problem 10 years ago.

China is actually far more fragmented than some people thought. The central government isn’t that all powerful. I mean even today, let alone 20 years ago. It is actually the big businesses like Ali/Tencent that are centralizing the data they collected — exactly like what US corporations are doing.

But I remember some story about Ali CEO dissappeared for a while... So, not exactly like US corporations.