A swathe of the world is adopting China’s vision for a tightly controlled Internet over the unfettered American approach, a stunning ideological coup for Beijing that would have been unthinkable less than a decade ago.

Vietnam and Thailand are among the South-East Asian nations warming to a governance model that twins sweeping content curbs with uncompromising data controls – because it helps preserve the regime in power. A growing number of the region’s increasingly autocratic governments watched enviously the emergence of Chinese corporate titans from Tencent Holdings Ltd to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd – in spite of draconian online curbs. And now they want the same.