The latest Steam Survey had a huge surge of Simplified Chinese

Pretty sure that if you risk being arrested for using a product, you tend to be fairly finicky about what that product (Steam in this case) is reporting to some global HQ. So I'm with Ultra on that point.

Pretty sure that if you risk being arrested for using a product, you tend to be fairly finicky about what that product (Steam in this case) is reporting to some global HQ. So I'm with Ultra on that point.

Well, but it's a global HQ, not a Chinese HQ. And how likely are they to report people for insisting on being their customer and making them profit?

Pretty sure that if you risk being arrested for using a product, you tend to be fairly finicky about what that product (Steam in this case) is reporting to some global HQ. So I'm with Ultra on that point.

Well, but it's a global HQ, not a Chinese HQ. And how likely are they to report people for insisting on being their customer and making them profit?

This gets murky actually. Valve might not be under any jurisdiction that Valve reveal data to a Chinese regulator. But regardless, I doubt Chinese citizens, fearing for their lives would care to take any risks.

You are just making stuff up here.
"For a few seconds"? Why would you assume that? Could easily be a lot longer.
I have no clue what time frame is needed for Steam to trigger that popup on your end, or under what conditions it fires, or if it is just random, or...

Could just be a "user X who was selected for survey has come online" trigger, which would be fine with even just some seconds...

The point OP made was "were able to connect for a short time" so I assumed that a short time was in the neighbourhood of seconds. Why? Because I also assume that the PRC keeps a very tight eye on their firewall and that such accidental unblocks are remedied ASAP. My main argument this point is that it sounded more like Steam was able to connect so Steam collected data, when there is a lot more that have to happen for the survey to be both received and sent, which includes the user having to click in a "I agree".

So yes I am making stuff up here, but no more and no less than either OP nor you. None of us sits on any facts, so this is all 100% speculation. I just find this point to be highly improbable.

Yes, absolutely.
You radically overestimate how much people care about stuff like that.
We are not talking about some (rightfully) paranoid dissenters, but just a gamer who wants to play a game.

Granted, I just somehow believe that people living under the watchful eye of their government and society does things with a bit more caution than you and me who lives under more or less total freedom (and even if our freedom isn't total there are a lot of people who live like it is without consequences while people in China most likely can see the consequences of people misbehaving).

In the end only Valve (and the PRC) knows, I just got the feeling from OP that this is telemetry that Valve collects just by being connected while it does require a manual step to send in the survey and one can opt out of it completely as well.

The most likely scenario to me is that it is the very same that happened last time, aka that this is Internet Cafe data, people using a rented machine at such a Cafe would have no problems from any of my above mentioned reasons to just click OK on whatever they get since it is not their machine.

Pretty sure that if you risk being arrested for using a product, you tend to be fairly finicky about what that product (Steam in this case) is reporting to some global HQ. So I'm with Ultra on that point.

Well, but it's a global HQ, not a Chinese HQ. And how likely are they to report people for insisting on being their customer and making them profit?

Where your HQ is have zero meaning here, what counts is where you have your offices, where you employ people, where you have financial resources and where you do business. If any of those points exists within say China then China can (and so does many other countries including the US so I'm not singling out China here) put pressure on a company to follow the rules or they loose the rights to all those assets. And in China those rules are that you hand over data if the PRC asks for it just like how it works with the Patriot Act in the US (the main difference being that you have to present a warrant signed by a judge in the US AFAIK but don't take my word on it, I'm no lawyer nor do I play one on TV).

But regardless, I doubt Chinese citizens, fearing for their lives would care to take any risks.

I think you need to turn down the drama wheel just a wee bit.
You started with arrest and now we're suddenly in a life or death situation.

The average Chinese citizen playing some video games are not fearing for their lives.
Even in China, committing a minor law infraction such as using VPN to circumvent restrictions to play a game will not get you thrown off the Wall...

The most likely scenario to me is that it is the very same that happened last time, aka that this is Internet Cafe data, people using a rented machine at such a Cafe would have no problems from any of my above mentioned reasons to just click OK on whatever they get since it is not their machine.

Not just "last time." There's something like 18 months of uncorrected data, which is why that had to be scrubbed from Liam's Steam tracker, and then the same thing happens every 3-4 months and does get corrected. The double-counting problem isn't an easy one to solve - you can't keep track server side because a whole bunch of machines behind one IP address is what you'd expect to see from a cafe, and you can't keep track client side because it's standard practise to roll back the machines to a standard (no malware, no cheats) image, so the client "forgets" that that machine has already participated in the survey. So every now and then we get a massive apparent spike in Chinese users and people ("Chinese is now the most used language on Steam!") pretend that the data are valid.

The reason why linux is not popular in china is simple: piracy, piracy and piracy. China doesn't care about copyright stuff at all. If you don't want piracy, there are "smuggled" windows oem keys for as low price as 2-5$. Some chinese fake company pretends to make 100000 windows tablets, and issues the same amount of oem codes from microsoft, then sells it. And as they don't care about open source, or the philosophy behind it, there is no any need or desire for them to adopt linux in any way. Also the asian culture is way more conformist-ish. Windows is the standard thing, and most of people use it without questioning. And let's admit it for once, it is a bit easier to use, and has more hardware support.

So we have multiple factors that set things as they are.

Piracy has little to do with this. The vast majority of those who use Linux have no problem shelling out $100 for a Windows license; they choose Linux for reasons other than cost. The reality is that the culture of open source almost does not exist in China, nor anywhere else outside of Europe and North America. For some reason people there simply do not understand the reason why openness is important, or just do not care.

Piracy has little to do with this. The vast majority of those who use Linux have no problem shelling out $100 for a Windows license; they choose Linux for reasons other than cost. The reality is that the culture of open source almost does not exist in China, nor anywhere else outside of Europe and North America. For some reason people there simply do not understand the reason why openness is important, or just do not care.

Well, there's larger problems than software freedoms in some parts of the world outside US and Europe to be fair. (Of course, that's also true here, but to a lesser and less acute way.)