The firewall isn't what was preventing Uber from competing in China...
But it is one of the things that prevented Google from competing in China. Here's an excerpt from an article previously posted on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12218607
The hurdles could be unpredictable, with an element of deniability. Sometimes Google found itself at the mercy of China’s ability to manipulate the digital infrastructure. The site would work slowly, or there would be outages. In one instance, Google found not only that users were blocked from its site, but also that when they typed in the address, they would be redirected to it competitor Baidu. This played into the narrative spun by Baidu that Google was overmatched in serving China, and that the local option was more reliable.
If you look at the paragraph right before you see that it corroborates that it's China, not the firewall, to blame for the anti-competitive behavior:
>Yes, Google made its own mistakes, including some cultural miscues. But the actions of the Chinese government against Google seemed less to do with regulations and more like harassment. The sanctions appeared directly tied to how well Google was doing in the marketplace. Google executives believed that Chinese officials had drawn a line in the sand — that when Google market share approached thirty percent, suddenly bad things would happen.
I did link to the Hacker News thread and I'm confused - you seem to be splitting hairs, what's the difference between China and China's firewall when it comes to tech companies? The latter is the stick used by the former.
But it is one of the things that prevented Google from competing in China. Here's an excerpt from an article previously posted on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12218607
The hurdles could be unpredictable, with an element of deniability. Sometimes Google found itself at the mercy of China’s ability to manipulate the digital infrastructure. The site would work slowly, or there would be outages. In one instance, Google found not only that users were blocked from its site, but also that when they typed in the address, they would be redirected to it competitor Baidu. This played into the narrative spun by Baidu that Google was overmatched in serving China, and that the local option was more reliable.