A generation of Chinese is coming of age with an internet that is distinctively different from the rest of the web. Over the past decade, China has blocked Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as thousands of other foreign websites, including The New York Times and Chinese Wikipedia. A plethora of Chinese websites emerged to serve the same functions — though they came with a heavy dose of censorship. Now the implications of growing up with this different internet system are starting to play out. Many young people in China have little idea what Google, Twitter or Facebook are, creating a gulf with the rest of the world. And, accustomed to the homegrown apps and online services, many appear uninterested in knowing what has been censored online, allowing Beijing to build an alternative value system that competes with Western liberal democracy.

These trends are set to spread. China is now exporting its model of a censored internet to other countries, including Vietnam, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Such outcomes are the opposite of what many in the West anticipated would be the effect of the internet. In a 2000 speech, President Bill Clinton argued that the internet’s growth would make China a more open society like the United States. For American and other Western internet giants, the hope of getting a piece of the huge China market is increasingly a pipe dream. China’s Communist Party has demonstrated clearly that it will walk down a path of tighter ideological control under President Xi Jinping. In the first half of this year, the internet regulator Cyber Administration of China said it had shut down or revoked the licenses of more than 3,000 websites.Even if the Western apps and sites make it into China, they may face apathy from young people.

Many young people in China instead consume apps and services like Baidu, the social media service WeChat and the short-video platform Tik Tok. Often, they spout consumerism and nationalism. In March, when the social media giant Tencent surveyed more than 10,000 users who were born in 2000 or after, nearly eight in 10 said they thought China was either in its best time in history or was becoming a better country each day. Nearly the same percentage said they were very optimistic or quite optimistic about their future. When young Chinese spend time abroad, many have to learn an entirely different internet ecosystem.