Why MySQL Dominates China While PostgreSQL Lags Behind

Global Trend Overview

According to the DB‑Engines ranking, MySQL remains the most popular relational database worldwide, while PostgreSQL has been the fastest‑growing system over the past decade.

Google Trends (Past Year)

Search‑interest data shows MySQL consistently outperforms PostgreSQL globally; the gap is especially large in China.

Regional Distribution

In most regions the market‑share ratio is roughly MySQL 60‑70 % versus PostgreSQL 30‑40 %. Notable exceptions: Russia (near parity), India (85 % MySQL / 15 % PostgreSQL), China (96 % MySQL / 4 % PostgreSQL).

Technical Factors Behind MySQL Dominance in China

Early Windows Support

MySQL released an official Windows binary in 1998. PostgreSQL only provided a stable Windows build in 2005, and early versions could not map PostgreSQL’s process model to Windows, limiting adoption on the Windows‑dominant desktop environment.

Lower Entry Barriers

MySQL allows a client to connect without specifying a default database; PostgreSQL requires a database name.

PostgreSQL needs an additional pg_hba.conf file for host‑based authentication, while MySQL uses its built‑in user system.

MySQL hierarchy: instance → database → table. PostgreSQL adds a schema layer ( instance/cluster → database → schema → table), which is unnecessary for most workloads.

Cross‑database queries are native in MySQL. PostgreSQL historically required extensions such as dblink or foreign data wrappers (FDW).

PostgreSQL’s fine‑grained permission model can cause frequent privilege errors during development and testing.

Performance Perception

Early internal benchmarks at Google showed MySQL outperforming PostgreSQL for search and advertising workloads, leading to its adoption. Modern performance depends on query complexity, concurrency, and latency; in many typical scenarios the two systems exhibit comparable throughput.

For a detailed discussion see Mark Callaghan’s blog (https://smalldatum.blogspot.com/).

LAMP Stack Effect

The LAMP stack (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) emerged in 1998 and became the de‑facto web‑application platform. Its widespread use cemented MySQL’s position, and tools such as phpMyAdmin remain more popular than MySQL Workbench.

Influence of Major Tech Companies

Engineers who worked on MySQL at Google and later at Facebook (e.g., the high‑availability solution MHA) propagated best‑practice patterns through the ecosystem: Google → Facebook/Twitter → Chinese internet giants → smaller firms, reinforcing MySQL’s market share.

Ecosystem and Tooling

Extensive adoption drove a rich ecosystem:

InnoDB introduced robust ACID transactions.

Replication, sharding, and high‑availability middleware (e.g., MHA, ProxySQL) support large‑scale deployments.

Percona provides utilities such as pt-online-schema-change (and its GitHub fork gh‑ost) and xtrabackup for online schema changes and hot backups.

Alibaba contributed upstream replication improvements; Chinese companies released SQL‑audit tools (Inception, SOAR) and parsers (PingCAP MySQL Parser).

PostgreSQL’s ecosystem lags in ready‑made parsers and SQL‑audit tooling, making comparable tasks more difficult.

Outlook

MySQL 5.7 reached end‑of‑life in 2022, ending support for a version that powered Chinese internet services for 15 years. As PostgreSQL continues to mature and AI/VR workloads emerge, the market may see a gradual shift, but the historical advantages—early Windows support, LAMP integration, and a mature tooling ecosystem—remain the primary reasons for MySQL’s current dominance in China.