Porter Erisman, a former Alibaba vice-president and director of Crocodile in the Yangtze, a documentary about his experience with the company, told the Guardian in April: "In China, just when the internet was getting started, there weren't many outlets for young people to express themselves. They couldn't do that in politics or even the arts, really. So the internet is where the first homegrown heroes of this new generation came from.