I asked the same question of a Japanese web developer friend a decade ago, since Japanese sites (at least, back then) were very similar.  The answer he gave made sense.<p>He said the reason Japanese websites were so busy was the greater percentage of mobile-only customers, many of whom weren&#x27;t using smartphones.  You could go to a website on your cheap &quot;feature phone&quot; and still comfortably navigate a site that was mostly a sea of links, while the sort of site you see more commonly in the West requires navigating too many pages.<p>Smart phone penetration in China is still around 50%, so I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if the same logic applies.<p>EDIT:  He also said in Japan programmers have about the same social status as the guy on the loading dock, so many of the corporate sites were programmed by fresh-out-of-college guys who would be passing that task off to someone else as soon as possible.  Not sure if the same applies in China.