[harpratap]

It has more to do with economic conditions I believe. Here in India it's the same, most people get into software engineering because of easy availability of jobs and don't really care about Computer Science itself. So the concept of Open source feels alien to most engineers here, especially "working for free" when you have to struggle so much just to get a very basic salary.

[baja_blast]

Also who has time for side projects when you work in the 996 work culture.

[harpratap]

I don't think this can be generalized for China. Plenty of companies in India, Japan and US have the same shitty culture too. Tesla, Space X, Apple are infamous for such workaholic cultures.