Comment by Animats

Japan had phones with lots of graphics well before smartphones. Those systems were not web-based. They were mobile-only, and for small screens.

China has another system. Many things are applets within the WeChat environment. This is a whole different world, using MINA, WXML, and WXSS. It's kind of like XML with an external XSS style sheet. Here's the official repo.[1]

It's interesting to see where that division leads. The XSS approach separates content and look much more strongly than HTML/CSS does. (At least as HTML/CSS is typically used. It's possible to have an HTML document with just the data, and use a single separate style sheet in CSs. There are people who argue for that, and some elegant examples.[2] But they are voices in the wilderness.)

The funny thing is, despite a different underlying technology, WeChat applets seem to look a lot like HTML/CSS web pages. The difference may be that the WeChat system was efficient enough to eliminate the demand for "native" smartphone apps.

[1] https://github.com/Tencent/weui-wxss

[2] https://every-layout.dev/blog/css-components/