What the article describes can absolutely be done. Well, sort of. China can't advertise its routes as the "fastest", because internet routing cares little abo

What the article describes can absolutely be done. Well, sort of. China can't advertise its routes as the "fastest", because internet routing cares little about performance[1], but they can otherwise work to make them an attractive option. It's certainly plausible that they could have pulled in 15% of global traffic. It's not plausible that they could have pulled in any traffic they so choose, but (depending on where their border is placed) they could have grabbed most of it. Also, it's not necessarily obvious to a casual observer what they could have grabbed. [1] Internet routing in practice is based mostly on politics, a little bit on cost, and basically just uses performance as a tie-breaker.