>These days a critical mass can be reached within a trading zone with not much (percentage wise) value added outside of that. I'd argue it has more to do with

>These days a critical mass can be reached within a trading zone with not much (percentage wise) value added outside of that. I'd argue it has more to do with language. The internet went global because English is a lingua franca across many different countries. There were lots of gains to be made by allowing it to work irrespective of national borders. In contrast, the vast vaaast majority of cultural and economic activity being done in a Chinese language is being done under the PRC. Taiwan’s not big enough to compare and neither are the Chinese communities in SE Asia, the US, Australia, etc. (and among that latter group, they do quite a bit of their interaction in English anyway). Eric Hobsbawm’s a political scientist who is considered an authority on the concept of Nationalism. One of his arguments was that the printing press created a sort of mass-media and standardization around specific languages that created a basis for people to develop a sense of community around what sort of vernacular language they read in. This was one of the progenitors behind the idea of “nationhood.” It’s why so many countries are constituted around common languages despite deep cultural divisions along other dimensions. It is possible the internet might break the same way, creating an “Anglosphere,” a “Sinosphere,” a “Francosphere,” etc.