[Barrin92]

Because China leapfrogged over the early internet era. In the West traditional publishers have strong brands and independent digital presences, mentally everything is a 'website' not a 'app'. It's also why traditional search is much more popular in the West than in China. In the West the internet is an open protocol where independent institutions publish their own information still. Things are indexable, locatable, and so on.

Chinese users grew up on everything being app content, traditional media is just an input like any other that agglomerators consume and then present algorithmically to users, everything is completely mixed between user generated content and news stories and there's no particular notion of news or journalism as a distinct entity.