I totally understand and support your stance. Total respect for resigning for idealistic reasons.

But I have another point of view on the subject after having worked in SE Asia. I'm not trying to contradict anyone here, just give my (hopefully informed) opinion.

There are no democracies in SE Asia. There are a couple of countries that pretend to democracy (Cambodia and the Philippines spring to mind), but even these are highly controlled, and elections are not "free" as we would understand the term. For most of SE Asia, it's worse than that, and any elections are a complete sham. E.g. Thailand, where a king and a military junta rule the country, and the elections are insignificant in terms of actual power.

This situation is portrayed in western media as being a result of bad governments and oppressive regimes. But having lived there and talked to locals, it's more complicated than that.

SE Asian culture (actually a whole set of diverse cultures, but they have this in common) have a large "power distance". This means they tolerate large amounts of differences in power levels between individuals. In practice, this means that they don't expect to be equal. There is a strong concept of karma between lives (you're born into the life you deserve based on your karma from previous lives) and a strong concept of community, respecting your elders, looking after your family, working together for the good of the whole group. Individuality is frowned on, truth is less important than respect (this one was hard to grok- it's better to tell your boss what they want to hear than to tell them the truth. It sounds like cowardice to us, but it's actually all about respect and social harmony).

It's very hard for westerners to understand this culture. We come from a different set of base assumptions about life and how it should be lived. And SE Asians don't understand our assumptions either.

This cultural gap plays into the efforts to make Asian democracies. It doesn't work like that there. Most of the efforts I've seen make no effort at all to understand the culture they're trying to change, and make a blanket assumption that western democracy is a one-size-fits-all best-practice method for governing a country. I thought that, too, until I actually went there and experienced it. Now I understand why democracy has never worked in SE Asia, and I understand why they like "strong" rulers, and I understand why free speech isn't important to them.

I don't want to paint efforts to liberate SE Asia in such a bad light, but there is, still, a strong element of cultural imperialism here. The opinion the "West is Best" and that our democratic values are superior to the undemocratic values held by SE Asians is strong. There are organisations out there promoting western values who have no clue about the SE Asian values (and the ancient, strong cultures behind them) that they're trying to change. It's not coming from a place of understanding, but from assumed superiority.

I have no idea if Google has spent the time to understand the Chinese market, but creating a search engine that doesn't return "sensitive" topics would be consistent with that kind of research. I get that it contradicts western ideals of free speech, but those values are less important there. Social harmony is more important. It sounds weird and wrong to us, and it would be if it was being implemented in a western country. But this ain't Kansas, and the rules are different.