I grew up in China, and I'm now living in the bay area. I just went back for a month for vacation. I too saw a more living mobile ecosystem.
and wechat is indeed in the center of this system. For example, a fruit stand would now accept mobile payment via wechat. those who run fruit stands are usually farmers.
I think it makes a lot of sense to build mobile payment into a a social app. because any currency would require a social network. and transferring money is a key social activity.
building independent mobile payment without the support from a mature social network is a bad idea, for example square and apple pay (only useable in the apple ecosystem, a partial mobile ecosystem).
China never seemed to have a credit card era, it jumped directly from paying cash to paying with mobile. whereas in the U.S., credit card is so convenient, people don't want to change.
for many years, wechat has been combining new features with its social network, whereas whatsapp wanted to be a pure chatting app and missed many opportunities.
you can use wechat to order food at restaurants, you can log into public wifi with wechat ....
This is just one example. Another thing I noticed is online shopping. At the gate of our apartment, each day, there are many deliver guys on tricycles. They have a more efficient and cheap delivering system.
For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.
This is not a complex idea, but hard to implement in the U.S., because we don't have the same population density here. When you build an infrastructure like this, you want to serve as many people as possible.
guess I should also write the other side of the story -- things I don't like about China.
Overall, I feel that China is like the U.S. in its early days (1920s). Or the 1999 Silicon Valley
There are a lot of opportunities, but less rules. It's a jungle basically. For people with tech depth and want to build something steadily, China is not the best place.
a high percentage of young entrepreneurs there are just opportunists. They are not interested in sitting down and building something useful. Instead, they just want to quickly raise/burn money and go public.
There are way more theranos' there in China.
And you need to have connections to success in China. This is a historical and cultural thing.
I don't know how many of you noticed the recent news of didi acquiring uber China. The leaders of the two companies are actually from the same family. One is the daughter of the Lenovo CEO. The other is the niece of him. Probably coincidence，but you see coincidences more often in China.
My attitude towards China is that I take it seriously. I admit what it does better. But I don't think I'm strong enough to fight in the jungle.
"a high percentage of young entrepreneurs there are just opportunists. They are not interested in sitting down and building something useful. Instead, they just want to quickly raise/burn money and go public."
I worked for several SF startups and most are the same. So I don't agree there are way more Theranos' in China. I would say they are probably around the same level in terms of many people claiming they are for something when they are not.
This doesn't just happen in tech though. I have seen it in banking as well when it was booming. When there is a booming industry, it tends to attract a lot of posers that exasperates the hype.
I agree, although China is worse by few levels I think.
I see this phenomena everywhere in China. I can't tell where Chinese silicon valley and wall street are. running start-ups has become a all-people movement.
I would like to see more of this kind of "Here's how I see it in the positive and negative" discussion on HN. Kudos for sharing the opposing sides of your own opinion.
Same here. I think startups everywhere are a jungle, but in China it's a lot deeper, much deeper. Tricks, politics, family, all of that plays a much bigger role and luck can change much more quickly. I don't know how it is in Shanghai but in the countryside it's also still possible that you need to deal with mob like groups that will simply put you in the hospital if they feel you are disturbing their business.
To be fair, you can get success more easily in US if you have connections which is the same as China. Maybe Bill Gate and his mother's background is a similar example to what you referred about DiDi.
Don't be ridiculous. If it were actually the same, then Bill Gates could have used his influence to get Netscape's site blocked from the internet or depending on the depth of his connections with Bill Clinton at the time, get Marc Andreessen thrown in prison.
But on the other hand, you seldom see people in Silicon Valley are actually from the valley. They are immigrants from different states and countries. They abandoned their connections (especially family connections) from home to start over here. Many of them became successful.
China simply doesn't have the same soil for this kind of success.
> For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks
We've had these in Japan for decades, but less high-tech - it's just a manual code lock and the delivery man writes the code down on a delivery slip and sticks in your mailbox.
For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.
But China invented the fruit lockers: you want fresh fruit, it gets delivered to a locker in your apartment everyday. I haven't tried it, but was a bit floored when I saw one.
We personally just have them leave packages at the wuye (apartment management), any high end apartment just has a counter that will keep your package for you, no need for a locker solution.
That's a cost-of-labor problem. Obviously there's no particular technological trick to it; the West had milk deliveries decades ago which is fairly similar. But cost-of-labor makes that impossible to do economically here today; you can't afford to pay someone to deliver something as cheap as fruit or milk in the US, because nobody will pay the requisite markup.
Whether that's advantage China or advantage US depends on your perspective.
it's a matter of cost-of-labor and population density.
I heard that railway systems in most countries are not profitable, they have to be funded by the government.
But the Chinese railway system is so advanced and profitable, due to cost-of-labor and population density. Even high speed railway wasn't a Chinese invention. As a comparison, the U.S. railway is so old and kinda desolate.
Most ideas are not originated from China, but they grow better in China.
Because of the population density, the network effect is stronger in China.
There's also the fact that China is not as burdened by legacy infrastructure and business models.
For example, consider high speed rail in California. Due to the existing rail system, the marginal increase in economic benefit gained by building a new high speed system is fairly small.
Compare this situation to high speed rail in China. Without the existence of a fairly efficient existing system, the economic benefit to building the high speed lines was massive.
This historical pattern is somewhat common.
Rising societies have all of the latest advances gained by building previous systems, and none of the existing societies' technical debt.
They get the newest and shiniest technological base, simply because they're building it now.
My neighborhood has an even simpler system. We all have individual mailboxes, and then there are a few larger mailboxes for packages. When the mailman delivers a large package, he puts it in one of the package boxes, locks it, then puts the key in the mailbox belonging to the recipient. The recipient then gets the key with the rest of their mail, which they use to get to the package. The package locks are designed to capture the key once you use them, so only the mailman can retrieve the key and use it again next time.
In London (and the rest of the UK) many convenience stores have parcel collection services. So when I want something from Amazon I deliver it to the Sainsbury's around the corner from my flat and then collect it when I go to buy food on my way home from work.
Really? I live in Tanjong Pagar Plaza, we have a post office / popstation in the community area, and use them all the time, every time I go collect stuff I see other people collecting things.
Strange to hear no one uses them.
Granted, post offices are beginning to hold less and less now, cutting costs I guess, which may be increasing the usage.
If I have to drive for miles to reach the locker, then I'd rather have my packages delivered to my door. That's why I thought China can implement this idea better, because by a walking distance, you can reach thousands of people.
But in the U.S., it may be a good idea to locate the lockers in grocery stores. Picking packages while doing groceries is also convenient.
To illustrate the level of wechat craze: even VCs will often add you on wechat rather than exchange emails. I've seen group chats of founders and VCs coming up with ideas and arranging funding all within wechat. It seems like people don't compartmentalize professional and private communications as much as Westerners do.
I bet facebook is thinking hard how to merge Messenger and Whatsapp without getting people angry.
> I bet facebook is thinking hard how to merge Messenger and Whatsapp without getting people angry.
Indeed. Simultaneous communication between WeChat circle, QQ group, the odd email CC'd to people in and out of the conversation. 'Keep the momentum'. Should anyone get confused, send them a screenshot from your phone of the other conversation. It is very fluid. Show you're communicating and getting things done. For transactions, pay via WeChat, or pay via AliPay, doesn't matter, works anywhere.
No need to integrate anything; users will do it themselves if they see a compelling need.
>for many years, wechat has been combining new features with its social network, whereas whatsapp wanted to be a pure chatting app and missed many opportunities.
Nah, WhatsApp was just crippled by its origins. It was started independently from a major social-network, and in a country whose currency and payments infrastructure wasn't going to scale outside the original borders very well.
This actually is "cutting edge" if you compare it to the bullshit we in the West have to deal with daily. I have way too much apps on my Android phone, none of which can talk to each other (despite intents) and half of which should be infrastructure-level anyway.
> b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)
... and almost completely ignored by Europe and the US. That they turned something potentially useful into actually useful is interesting in its own right.
> c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)
Except it is 2016 and in Europe (and presumably in the US) it only barely works somewhere, sometimes, for some things.
I mean, let's not play double standards - if it's entirely fair to call Western companies (especially SV startups) "innovative" for wrapping something common in a Bootstrap theme, or turning something that should be a product into a butt service to extract rent from people, then it's entirely fair to call China "cutting edge".
Most of the entries were less than amazing. QR codes in particular still feel like a gimmick that's slower than a working system, or even Googling a few key terms. In a country with near-universal credit/debit card penetration, I don't actually want to pay with my phone most of the time - small merchants using Square totally solves the problem for me.
But not switching apps would be freaking amazing. Anything resembling a decent inter-app API, or a scheduling process that doesn't suspend apps for small focus switches (which still regularly crashes even high-end apps like Amazon) would be magical. Many of my apps would be much more valuable with even minimal non-switching, and I'd write sync/communication software myself if the focus issues didn't make it so painful.
ApplePay is pretty nice, actually. China is great at low infrastructure easy to deploy solutions because it is still kind of a poor country, but the same solutions would never be accepted (or needed) in the west.
I don't know for QR codes, but swish payments (pay things on phone) are very popular in Sweden. I can swish my local fruit seller, the bar tenders and my friends in a matter of seconds.
As far as I know Sweden is generally more advanced in this kind of technologies than what I see in Hong-Kong.
QR codes is interesting. The tech companies here considered QR codes low tech and backwards, ironically, and basically didn't invest in it in the hopes of going with BLE (bluetooth low energy) beacons and at a time NFC.
NFC was considered inferior to BLE too but BLE has come and literally no one uses them.
The reason why QR isn't adopted is because none of the major platforms has invested in it. Apple, facebook, don't have native QR support.
In China QR is built into wechat, which everyone has.
I think part of the reason both QR and BLE don't fare well in the West is related to the point a), about doing things without switching apps. QR codes and BLE beacons are things that should be interacted with on the OS level, not requiring a separate app for every possible vendor that decides to use codes/beacons. Alas, the primary application of BLE today is trying to trick people into spending more on shoes and clothes. What a waste of a potentially very useful technology.
When I had a look at the proposed BLE specs for iPhone I was disappointed that it seemed an app could only see it's own beaons. I'd quite like an app that could show any beacons around and say who's they are and if there are any offers or cool stuff associated. I think as it is store A's beacons can only be seen with store A's app and store B's only with store B's and who wants that?
"Bus stops just have a QR code that you scan to get the live countdown clocks for the next bus"
When there is a panel displaying in Arab numerals (i.e. for humans, directly) the same information, the QR code solution becomes a silly and convoluted thing that has to use the user's high tech just for the sake of it.
Another term for this is integration. It is not just about not switching apps, it is about ingratiating different features (chat&social&payment&voucher) and providing a natural and consistent experience for users in a single app. You don't see that quite often for SV companies.
How innovative is this? I am not sure, but definitely something new and first popularized by Tencent in the era of QQ before 2008.
> b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)
Not main point of the article, there are plenty of other innovations in the areas of living streaming and drone technology, but unfortunately you missed them.
> c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)
Not sure about how Nokia and Europe did it, but in China you can pay movie tickets, utilities, taxi fees, fines, etc in a single app. Maybe Europe was a pioneer in this and I wasn't aware of that.
Check out for swish in Sweden: "According to Arvidsson, the Swedes love Swish so much, it’s already revolutionising the local banking system, with several major banks refusing to accept cash at all, and as of late last year, four out of every five purchases in the country were being made electronically."
I had never heard of Swish until now. Very interesting. I know there are some differences, but how is it fundamentally different from something like Square? https://squareup.com/
Not familiar with Square but Swish started as an app for payment between individuals, such as friends sharing a restaurant bill or payment of used things (think Craigslist etc). People even use it as payment for used cars. It was developed by all major banks in cooperation, so huge network effect from start, uses the well established "mobile bank id" for authorization and is instant and currently free. The instantaneousness means that you feel safe to hand over the keys (in the car sale case) the moment your app beeps to confirm the transfer, which is within a few seconds after the buyer authorized it on his phone.
Some additional info: your phone number is identifying the transfer target, and is associated with your debit bank account number behind. So you don't have to share anything additional, if your friend or the buyer has your phone number he can initiate a transaction.
Square has a mobile phone payment option, but most of their actual use is as a small-merchant credit card processor. They have no integration into larger stores (which have their own card readers), and as a result there's no real point for users in setting up their mobile pay system. My credit card works with Square and everything else, an app would only work with Square.
But all the world is following up China with the stupidest idea ever, reinventing a CLI in a chat..
Seriously, we had this interfaces in IRC bots about 20 years ago..
And now it seems the holy grail of technology..
Except IRC bots did not succeed and took over the world. I doubt if there is any non-technical people still using IRCs. And in terms of the features, you cannot make payments using IRC bots.
Even if IRC bots could theoretically be feature-complete, you can't judge a product by saying "oh we had this feature as well earlier, just that we didn't succeed." Having a feature and having a feature that is successful can be quite different.
Microsoft might had the concept of tablet way earlier than Apple but it was Apple that made the success around iPad.
Having a successful feature doesn't mean that is the best.
Apple Pay is far far better than using QR codes to pay.
The stupidest gui is much quicker than a CLI on a phone.
I hope that all this hype for the oldest interface in the world resurrected will collapse soon.
I think they're referring to the recent craze about bots (or "conversational interfaces", if you want to sound smart). They've been all over the news in past few months, for some reason considered new and innovative.
Being able to use somethingis considered a feature. Since apple pay is only accepted at walgreens and a handful of places, it's pretty lacking om that feature.
You should probably read it again, focussing on the use cases not just the technical details. The technical details are more the Chinese characteristics than the actual features.
Maybe it's hard to understand if you haven't seen it.
Sorry but this article is not honest. All the example here have counter-examples of USA first apps.
lot of apps used QR code since the iPhone had apps,
Uber hail ride is present in several apps since long, Google Maps, CityMapper, ...
There are apps to order pizza.
Live streaming video app like justin.tv, ustream or livestream
Tinder is not the first dating app, it just popularized a new model to begin a conversation : the double validation model, Badoo or Grindr existed long before.
The WeChat model is NOT great, it means a monopoly on apps, they can remove you from their micro app store if they want like they did with Uber and remove you from the country. We are far better with an equalitarian app store like Play Store or (in lesser ways) the App Store. I think WeChat is the result of the pseudo banning of the Play Store in China, and it should NOT be a thing of desire.
To get anything done in China there must be some sort of state sponsorship. Just look at the crackdown on original journalism recently. This intentionally causes only a few approved firms to prosper and allows for these ecosystem apps to flourish.
I find it hard pressed to take seriously the claim that being able to live in the WeChat app is an innovation. I can certainly see the appeal to companies interviewed by the New York Times like Facebook and Kik who probably look at that kind of usage model enviously, but I think it's important to note that the use of non-Chinese services is not looked upon highly by the Party and this can be seen as an expression of regional favoritism. As much as Facebook would hope you live and breathe in their ecosystem 24/7, 365, it's harder to get away with that in places outside of China.
I think the "living in a WeChat ecosystem" proposition doesn't hold much appeal from a user perspective, but from the perspective of companies looking to build apps it can be quite appealing. Native development is very expensive, and being able to plug in to a platform with identity, location, payments and social network is a huge win for a company looking to get a product out quickly and cheaply.
IMO it holds very much appeal from the user perspective - tight integration of various services is a big win, and it's something we in the west don't enjoy - with each company trying to steal your attention for themselves, instead of cooperating to build actually useful ecosystem of tools.
Oh yeah, I should have qualified that with "developing applications in non-native code for native platforms doesn't have much appeal from a user perspective". ie: it would be great if the Official Account apps available through WeChat were native (and users would like that) but they're not; broadly speaking, webviews are typically less appealing than native layout. I 100% agree that the tight integration of services is a big win from the perspective of a user.
Ok, I'll agree with your clarified point. Personally I'm alergic to webviews, I can immediately tell which application is native and which is a thin layer on top of the browser, by the very virtue of the latter sucking hard.
I have lived in China for some time and I am kind of tired of refuting nytimes, washingtonpost propaganda about China.
Everything you read on those newspapers is about propaganda, propaganda to influence most small investors(what they call dumb money)on one of the financial centers of the world New York, or propaganda to influence politicians on the US political center of US, Washington.
The elite financial industry that rules USA really admires China authoritarianism.
China is an enormous country with lots of great things, but innovation is not one of their "fortes". There is a big bubble there that is going to do bang and is not going to be pretty.
Not so good important things about China( that of course the propaganda omits):
-Their internet is shit, capped by Government and closed to the outside world.
-There is an army of spies(more than a million) working for the State, everything you do is controlled.
- There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.
-They are communist, the interest of the individual is always subordinated to the community. If you have a girl with a Chinese woman outside China when you visit China they can refuse to let the girl go out. China needs girls.
I honestly don't know what you are "refuting" with that.
You listed some very generic things that are "wrong" with China, but have nothing to do with the point NYTimes was trying to make.
The article was talking about how China is ahead of the west in regards to mobile payment methods, and you try to refute that by saying they have an army of spies and are communist, and also have less women and limited access to websites outside china? I don't get it.
If you said: "From living in China for X years I can tell you that it isn't really the case that almost any fruit vendor accepts payment via mobile phone, and it isn't really a common payment method." - That would've been valid criticism addressing the core points of the NYTimes article.
As it stands though your comment fits perfectly in the stream of comments trying to downplay the articles credibility without actually addressing it, which is somehow common of any article mentioning "China" and things like "cutting edge" and "innovation" and is making me increasingly suspicious of who is actually spreading propaganda.
Edit: And honestly the things you listed are common knowledge by now, and have no place in an article about mobile tech in China. That would be like including a paragraph about Guantanamo bay in every article about Silicon Valley.
LOL, yeah, you are right, things you given "must be" the reasons
why innovation is not one of Chinese's "fortes". But the problem is they are innovating, in fact, and making more and more influence in the world. I can not believe you lived in China and know none of those "big" news from Chinese...
OK seriously. What innovation are we talking now, aside of mobile redux of PayPal?
They shown the world how to land a rocket stage intact? Perhaps they developed a bunch of new medical treatments that are not actually snake oil? They invented social networks that the rest of the world copied in envy? Introduced touchscreen tech that's actually usable?
Honestly I must have missed all the "big" news in soft and hard tech, 'cause another eBay clone is sure as hell ain't big. It feels like rerun of Japan craze from 3 decades back, only without ninjas and shurikens this time.
The thing is that no one is going to explain to you what's going on in China. Understanding the Chinese ecosystem takes considerable effort and the people that do understand would rather talk to others in the know than to a wall. I actually cringe a bit even writing this.
If you want to think that there's no difference between PayPal, eBay and modern Chinese versions you are free to do so. But until you've used these things in China (or at least had sufficient imagination), you won't actually know if there is something there.
I've used eBay, Aliexpress and native TaoBao directly. About the only difference is their current market cap. They are so alike in user interaction and session flow one could probably reuse 80% of test cases unmodified.
Wechat is great but here (Norway) payments have been a solved problem for years. I'm not even sure I used cash this year at all other than to unlock a luggage trolley at the airport and it's been like that for over a decade. Even the bank card transaction is so smooth, fast (seconds) and ubiquitous that mobile payment services like Vipps struggled to get a foothold.
if we talk seriously, the best way is to check all the top computer science conferences where "cutting edge" papers are published rather than nyt news. Yeah, maybe you and I don't want it to be the truth but I guess you can find much more Chinese names as what you expected. And more names next year, I guess.
It also pays to check the universities affiliated in the papers. More often than not they are not Chinese but the usual gang of suspects, even if there's an ethnic Chinese coauthor.
So they can innovate but need to learn how to do it best. And actually in some research directions, they(go back to China) are leading now. It's just the beginning of the innovation explosion from China, I guess. An opponent stronger than japan.
I don't view it really in adversarial perspective: any science and tech innovation inevitably comes to benefit whole world. A technological breakthrough originating from China would be just as welcome; so far though they are still at compass and gunpowder.
Id argue it's not really flourishing if the government basically grants you a monopoly and hinders your foreign competition. I suspect there is a reason why WeChat isn't anywhere near as popular in the states and in Europe.
Is there any chance you're an expat living in China? Many expats complain about the internet because theytry to access the foreign internet. Internet within China is actually very speedy.
Regarding gender imbalance, this wasa cultural issue. It's a problemin many cultures where male heirs are preferred over female heirs.
I'd also lile to point out the Bay Area also has an infamous gender imbalance issue.
In 40 years, the Soviet Union went from a medieval-like society with 95% of the people being peasants working their lords' lands, to inventing LEDs, grid-scale nuclear power, orbital launches, artificial satellites, manned space flight, commercial supersonic flight, seminal work in transplantation and artificial organs, etc. It became the second world superpower in science and innovation, which by the way, it no longer isn't after the fall of communism.
It was pretty much an economic miracle, like the so-called "German miracle" and "Japanese miracle", although of course most current thinkers won't recognize it because Communism is Bad(tm) and it seems we can only think in black and white (as the Soviet Union had an autochratic and murderous regime, apparently we can't say what they did right).
So I don't think the statement that communism is bad for innovation holds water historically. It's bad for other things, but not necessarily for innovation.
Maybe the Russians already had it in them and we're just being held back by bad government? You don't just grow a science community in a generation you either (a) steal it (e.g. From Germany) or (b) nurture it over a long time, and the USSR was able to have both. Russia just didn't go from people running around in loin clothes to sending robots into space after the Bolshevik Revolution. There is already a deep scientific culture their before.
China even more so. For much of history, China has been the richest country on earth! Not just total, but even per capita! Ya, the late Qing and republic eras were a mess, but that China would prosper after a period of decline has happened before and isn't surprising. Mao's Great Leap Forward and cultural revolution probably hurt more than helped, and China is mostly where it is today inspite of the communists. It's all about the people.
Germany and Japan were both developed before they were devestated, and knew collectively how to develop again; it wasn't a miracle in any case. Leading countries tend to lead even when knocked back with setbacks. What is perhaps a miracle was Germany breaking away from its Holy Roman Empire roots in the first place, or Japan modernizing in the mid 19th century (incidentally, this happened at the same time). Once you make that "step", you are likely not to fall backwards.
I can't believe we are still debating about Communism in this day and age because it has been proven inferior in every way but...
Communism is bad for innovation for two major, connected, reasons. First, there is very little, if any, competition. Most innovation comes from trying to beat the other guy and there just isn't any competition in a system that wants the state to run everything. Second, entrepreneur's are non-existent because there is no way for them to make money off of their inventions outside of cozying up with the State.
Also, your point about them moving from a medieval society to a modern one is ironic considering the USSR's pathetic technology. Outside of military applications they were failing in almost every single way. Just read some stories about the East Germans trying to flee to West Germany or the USSR's Olympic team visiting the US and thinking that our grocery stores were fake because of all of the food.
Well their scientific output (not only for military applications) was actually very high, but they already had a great scientific community before Communism.
If they didn't then they wouldn't have been able to keep up for such a long time and Russia today couldn't be such a big geopolitical adversary to this day.
If they had not implemented Communism after WWI I believe they could have been a second US.
I think we are in agreement. Russia has done fairly well in spite of their past economic system and today would be far better off if they had adopted our, American, system.
I can understand why people take a closer look at different economic systems in times of economic recession or even depression, but the first thing you should look at is what was the result for countries that tried it.
Soviet Union: Yes they industrialised at an astonishing rate, but they did this only for a single purpose: war. Even after the second world war the only area in which they could keep up with the West consistently was the military complex. And in the end the system failed although Soviet leaders were smart enough to let it implode in a way that didn't create civil war at a grand scale.
Yugoslavia: Socialism failed, ended in a nasty civil war.
Cuba: Technologically backwards, people live there like we did a 100 years ago.
North Korea: They have such a poor and malnourished population that today a North Korean is on average significantly smaller than a South Korean. Yet they maintain a massive military.
Venezuela: A oil rich (one of the largest oil reserves in the world!) country with internal and external peace and fertile lands was turned by Socialism into a starving country. Venezuelans today literally hunt animals like dogs and cats on the streets so they don't starve. Absolute madness.
China: Communist policies under Mao led to 30-40 Millions of Chinese starving to death when he collectivised the land. Later the Chinese turned their internal system around to something that resembles more a wild west capitalism with a sprinkle of Meritocracy and only then Chinese saw significant improvements in their lives.
Nazi Germany: This is controversial today as many claim that they weren't really Socialist. My opinion is that it was although it had a private sector. Still all economic activity was under 100% control of the government and all they produced went either to their massive social system or towards war. A rough translation of the Nazi parties name is "National Socialist German Workers Party". I believe that Socialist reject the Socialist nature of the Nazis because it embarrasses them.
To my knowledge there is not a single example of a Communist society that worked. But besides the economy there is a disturbing similarity between all societies that tried Socialism: Concentration Camps and Authoritarianism.
They needed this because there's always too much resistance to the Socialist System in every society that tried it. (people want to be free) In Socialist societies you need to police the thought of everyone and send them to correction camps if they resist because otherwise it would implode.
Correlation doesn't equal causation. I don't think you can say that just because those things happened under communism means that communism is good for innovation. In fact, you could just as well argue that modern day Russia persisteted even despite communism.
I didn't say communism is good for innovation, I just said that the statement that it is bad for innovation doesn't hold water and provided a counterexample.
> There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.
To put in in to perspective, there are 1.06 males per female in China [0] which though high, isn't materially different to other large developing countries such as India and Pakistan.
On another note, the ratio for Arabic countries in the peninsula are quite fucked up. If you see the TV show "Generation Kill" from HBO, the character played by James Ranson has a theory, which is quite interesting watching the numbers : there would not be a single war if there was enough women in the Arabic Peninsula.
Totally bullshit! I am Chinese. I have to reply, cause someone here even believe the shit you told.
"- There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born."
Fucking crazy, No Government never do this.
"- If you have a girl with a Chinese woman outside China when you visit China they can refuse to let the girl go out. China needs girls."
Where you get it, No this will never happen in China
"-They are communist, the interest of the individual is always subordinated to the community. "
Only the Party's name is communist now in China.
Pretty strong wording but I definitely have to agree on this sentence:
> There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.
There is no possible benefit imaginable for any government to encourage the killing of girls. This just doesn't make sense from a Collectivist perspective.
I believe that China actually had strong laws that forbid doctors from telling pregnant women which sex their child would have because many Chinese in rural areas would abort female children on their own accord.
This was basically because of the one child policy and the fact that Chinese men are supposed to take care of their parents when they get old. So it was more of a result of really bad government policy and self interest of families.
But from what I know the one child policy has officially ended in China, so I don't think this will be a big issue in the future.
Traveling to major cities in China (and Korea) is like a preview of where the US will be in ~5 years from a technology-society integration perspective. Easy payments on your phone, electronic communications for official notices/correspondences, mobile-electronic interactions with government, many/most people playing games and socializing about them, non-personal-car transportation (taxis/didis, buses, bikes), hyper-dense cities as populations urbanize.
It makes sense that China (and Korea) have leaped ahead. They have relatively high average IQ populations. They have cultures that celebrate education, intelligence, and hard work (not sports and broism). They have heavy governmental investment in infrastructure (eg internet, cell networks) and they heavily regulate industries so as not to stymie utilities such as the internet.
Hopefully the US and Europe can create a cultural shift (particularly the US on this front) and can see more government investment in infrastructure for technology and ease of access. If so, the US/Europe will maintain/grow their competitive edges vs China at least, as they have better property rights, fairer courts, more developed financial markets, more meritocracy of opportunity, etc. Korea has the best of all worlds in many ways, but not a large enough population or enough natural resources to be a contender for one of the top few economic powers in the world.
"It makes sense that China (and Korea) have leaped ahead. They have relatively high average IQ populations. They have cultures that celebrate education, intelligence, and hard work (not sports and broism)"
How ridiculous and bigoted on every front.
China values 'hard work' and 'intelligence'? It would seem you could also say they value oppression, poverty, pollution and copying everything. But that wouldn't be fair.
Some places in China have done well in infrastructure, as has most of S Korea, but there are two primary differences:
A) China / Korean built up their infrastructure nearly from scratch in the modern era. Totalitarian or near totalitarian governments actually can do well when their are obvious investments to make.
B) Their populations are closer. This is a big one for transport, in particular.
China is what China is, and I see it being a little bit more than that for 2 more decades, but the only long term difference will come as they bring more people out of poverty = more consumers. By that time, they will have their own demographic problems.
I believe that most of the geopolitical shift has already happened.
The 'next 50 years' will be driven not by China, so much as 3 billion people in other places, currently living on $2 a day, coming into living on $50 a day. That will be huge, and more spread out.
Hopefully, it comes without too much tension.
I'll bet in 50 years the 'leaders' in various fields will generally still be the leaders in those fields, for the most part.
my friend, 50 usd/day in current value is an unrealistic dream for poor of this world. that is high above world average, and if that happens, then high salaries will rise appropriately and those 50$ will have a value of maybe a cup of coffee.
I cannot see undeveloped parts of Africa, Asia and South America being much better-off in 50 years, just because time passes. They will all have super cheap phones, and their own version of poverty. Plus many places can actually spiral down due to continuous wars (ie middle east)
You seem to have conveniently removed from the quote you cited the following sentence in the very same paragraph, which says, "They have heavy governmental investment in infrastructure (eg internet, cell networks) and they heavily regulate industries so as not to stymie utilities such as the internet."
Doesn't that address the points you made about the benefit of government intervention and infrastructure build up?
> B) Their populations are closer. This is a big one for transport, in particular
You realize that S.Korea is ~3-4x as dense as China, that China is only about as dense as the UK, and the distance between major cities in China is comparable to distances between major cities in the US, right?
I could agree with some of the latter part of your post. Could have done without the glib rudeness at the beginning. I don't mean anything "bigoted" whatsoever and I'm curious what exactly came across that way.
I think there's a big element of not being handicapped by 'legacy' infrastructure here. The US won't roll out chip+pin because it already has magswipe POS systems in too many places. Whereas places in China which have no existing system can deploy whichever is most convenient to get started with - which sounds like wechat at the moment.
When the West moved toward a thriving ecosystem of web applications, the web scene in China was a complete mess. Not many people were confident enough to use the Web, let alone trust a random website with their bank account which has no dispute channel. Plus the web is full of malware and scams and almost all PC ran pirated Windows XP with abysmal if any antivirus software.
When most people equated internet with the IE icon, people in China did it with the dorminating IM software made by Tencent.
The explosion of mobile ecosystem speaks to the lackluster of a thriving web ecosystem and to some degree a clunky financial system and lack of meaningful consumer protection.
People and places constantly leapfrog each other with technology. Japanese and German industry after WWII was superior to American industry because the latter was not destroyed and rebuilt with modern technology.
I still think it's best to be the leader, inventing new things rather than improving the legacy systems of your competitor. If only because falling behind and deflating land and labor prices is painful during times of peace and traumatic during times of war.
Chip+pin was rolled out in the UK in a matter of years, and contactless payment is making similar progress at the moment, so I'm not really convinced legacy infrastructure is what's holding the US back.
I get the impression that the US has hit a "max". It could be just me, but we are still on old english measurement system. The latest payment change was chips in credit cards. We have ApplePay, but I don't see many people using it (could just be me). Like you say, people fight back against sprawl and increased density. Everyone wants their house, yard, pool, car, etc. I just saw an article saying something like "we won't make required benchmarks for yearly co2 production because people won't give up their SUVs/trucks". There are serious, societal pressures against 'change', in the general.
If "using technology" means having a smart phone on which you message, check Facebook, hail a taxi, and play games then I don't think there is any correlation. Or maybe it varies by country. I say that because where I live (Thailand) smart phone penetration is pretty high and rapidly rising, while IQ is pretty low and gradually dropping [1].
I meant that greater intelligence and drive mean higher likelihood to invent or incorporate technology, higher likelihood to succeed driving its adoption as a business, etc.
To try to make this more concrete and tractable. Imagine this oversimplified scenario:
Country A's population is 100 people and their "culture" values education, intelligence and hard work. Country A's average IQ is 107 and the two most desired professions in the country are to be an engineer or a businessperson.
Country B's population is 100 people and their culture looks down on "nerds" and favors "coolness" and hanging out. Country B's average IQ is 100 and the top desired professions in the country are being a sports star or a rock star.
Obviously I'm drawing at extremes here, but you see where I'm going... which country produces more citizens that contribute to technology? Country A is probably gonna produce more cool tech over time than country B, even with equal-sized populations, due to a combination of cultural values / social incentives and population intelligence.
Yes. And same with art. I think western societies really do not have a need for more artists, musicians, djs and so on. We need more engineers, more plumbers, more bike fixers, and more teachers.
IMHO the US has been becoming country A more and more for the past couple of decades, but in the mean time a large of part of the population is stuck in (or clings to) country B, hence the particularly venomous presidential campaign season.
The article pretty much sums up my experience living abroad as a Chinese.
A few years ago when renren.com was still the most popular social media for Chinese users, it was filled with people sharing funny pictures and videos, interesting news and discussing trending topics automatically suggested by the site.
Around that time on Facebook though, people are still posting their vacation photos, text status updates and nothing more. Nobody was sharing anything on the platform.
Now Facebook has became Renren No.2, while Renren lost to WeChat.
Renren had already lost to QQ Space before Wechat existed. Which I find hilarious, the Myspace clone where you can annoy viewers with auto-playing music and atrocious Javascript beat out the Facebook clone.
As far as I know, QQ Space was way earlier than renren. It was renren that beat QQ Space. Many of my friends followed the migration path of QQ Space -> renren -> WeChat.
It's sad to see the recurring condescending attitude of HN crowd towards China and it's recent (and well deserved) technological prowess. C'mon guys, all said and done, China is kicking ass. You've got to give credit where it's due.
Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because the momentum that they have generated.
The only thing that still remains a red flag for me is China's lack of democracy and political instability that may come due to it.
I've been here for 9 years and am leaving in a couple of weeks. China kicks butt only when compared to itself, but lags in almost everything else. Many Chinese solutions (wepay) are merely solving problems that the west didn't have (lack of bankcard use, no NFC infrastructure, security..well). On the other hand, the internet is absolutely 3rd world for anything international: I get better access in the Philippines or Indonesia. Just this morning, reddit and HN weren't working on my phone/@home for whatever reason I don't know.
And all the countries around China, I visit them often, they use none of China's internet stack. Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, are all very strong in SE Asia. This includes Chinese places around China, like HK, Taiwan, Singapore. If Chinese mobile innovation was so great...wouldn't they have even just a little bit of success outside of China?
> Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because the momentum that they have generated.
China will be continued to be driven by China, but the internet world has already began fragmenting into China and everyone else.
- prevented Google and Facebook to compete, even though they claimed to be open market to wto
As for your momentum, don't forget the trillions of state debt, the wto membership expiring this year, xi the dictator closing down news channels, billions in capital outflow
While it might be true in modern times regarding copying, Europe and US also did take a lot from them in past centuries and looking at historical documents, we didn't always pay for it.
So just like (my country) Germany. "Made in Germany" was introduced by Britain to mark inferior German copycat products.
Calling copying successful products, methods, inventions "stealing" is a very subjective statement. If you want to see what someone who doesn't "steal" can achieve look at the stories of children that provided the inspiration for the Mowgli story. A more reasonable description of not reinventing the wheel is "being smart".
To me, the impressive thing the China has done is making the technology ubiquitous and commercially successful within China. As a software developer, I don't see a lot of magic in writing applications. I feel confident that I could write a WeChat or a mobile payments platform given enough time. But to convince hundreds of millions of people or thousands of retailers to use it? That is beyond my comprehension.
When I hear about technological prowess, I am expecting things like rockets that land on barges, self driving cars, and even block chains. Not web apps and mobile apps.
China has enough of the pieces in place that I wouldn't be surprised to see some innovations soon that would impress me. But it just hasn't happened yet.
When I hear about technological prowess, I am expecting things like rockets that land on barges, self driving cars, and even block chains. Not web apps and mobile apps.
Most of Chinese people share the same opinion. There are huge resources poured into the areas you mentioned above. Though the progresses made on those fronts in China won't be covered by Western media, until they happened.
"Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because the momentum that they have generated"
(Almost) Nothing is led by China and (almost) nothing ever will.
I remember as a boy the stories of Japan taking over the world in the 1980's. The same will come of China.
The Bubble will burst, and they'll slowly find their way into the world order.
Bar codes? Give me a break.
They've done well with some type of commerce activities wherein the tech facilitated development given their needs (Ali Baba), but that's not really tech.
Everything is copy.
Tell me - what tech does anyone use that was conceived of, developed and made in China?
I think that's not a good example. This isn't an "invention", it's just an obvious engineering solution for a problem. So the reason others don't build buses like that is much more likely because they don't have a problem that can be solved by that design, not that they haven't thought or can't think of such a solution.
Thanks for that. Nifty invention - that nobody uses outside of China.
Meanwhile, talk to any rail car maker in the world, and they'll tell you that as part of the deal they had to sell trains in China, they had to hand over 100% of the IP, research, R&D, plans, schematics. And within 1 year the government had handed over the plans to a state owned competitor who had copied the entire thing from top to bottom.
When we see those nifty trains running over San Francisco, you'll have a point.
As far as I know, the modern trains that I've seen in China seem to be manufactured by Chinese companies.
The technology, if I am not mistaken, were transferred to China by Soviet Union and European companies post WW2 in a legal and friendly manner, i.e., they send their experts here to do manufacturing or China send some people overseas to learn about the technology.
And the same thing happened to Japan if I remember correctly, they were able to "learn" designs from the West and improve on it to build their railway system that is one of the best in the world.
He is not talking about 1980s communist-era trains, he is talking about HSR which was "technology-transferred" wholesale from Japanese and German companies under small-series licensing deals, then eerily similar trains were manufactured en masse locally.
If you have traveled in a Shinkansen in Japan and then been on Chinese HSR, you can see that the HSR interiors are almost identical copies of the Japanese equivalents.
However the key part that China cannot copy from Japan is the human software part, that is the training and service excellence of 50 years of history with hundreds of millions of passenger kilometers of operational history and zero passenger fatalities during operation.
China's HSR has already had multiple fatalities during operation, unfortunately.
"As far as I know, the modern trains that I've seen in China seem to be manufactured by Chinese companies."
Yes - because in order to do business in China, you have to give over your IP to a Chinese company and 'partner' with them to sell there, OR, after you give over your IP someone else gets their hands on it and copies you and you've wasted your time.
China is not an open market, most sectors are heavily protected.
Granted - it's arguably a smart thing for them to do during 'catch up phase' - but you can't remain competitive by doing those things.
Non-Chinese nations should impose tarriffs on all Chinese goods until we can freely sell things there without government interruption.
They can protect their banks, telecoms etc. like every country, but not every consumer good.
The companies that have been successful there are largely consumer retail like restaurants, clothing etc..
Sure they are kicking ass when it comes to money but I honestly don't think that a monolithic app the dominates the entire market is the right path forward for a free and open society.
Wechat/Alipay change China a lot. Now I rarely use credit card. Not all gas stations accept credit card, but every one of them happily takes wechat. In many restaurants you can order in wechat and pay with it.
Not that I love the idea of a monolithic app controlling everything in our life, but the next big thing to take its place need to live up to its level of convenience.
I travel often to China, yes not just Mobile Tech, but also many fronts it is taking the lead. The bottom line, East Asia has the highest average IQ on the globe, and China produces almost 4x engineer degrees each year of what US has.
With globalization in a world that is flat, and the extremely hard working attitude plus education-first tradition there, the future looks great on its side.
In US, we're dealing with so many social issues while other countries are catching up on many key fronts.
The rule of law, private property protections, and fair courts count for a lot in the wealth game. China has lots of potential but the politics are too corrupt. Chinese growth is being suppressed, if you can believe it, by corruption.
I totally agree on the education-fifth attitude in the US though. I think attitudes are changing a bit as reality bites those who screwed off in school harder and harder every year. The public schools are still a shambles.
> The rule of law, private property protections, and fair courts count for a lot in the wealth game.
I think this is a more nuanced issue. For instance, for the most part, China seems like libertarian paradise, but try and fuck with food supply and you'll get sentenced to death. Which, honestly, I consider fair. In the West, we're too far on the other end of the spectrum - overregulation of honest businesses and not enough punishment for dishonest entrepreneurs. Regarding private property protections, we have this IMO absurd notion of intellectual property, which hinders innovation and progress on our side, sometimes in pretty ridiculous ways (Elsevier comes to mind). As for fair courts, I had (thankfully) zero experience with those in China so I don't know how bad it is there, but the justice system in Western countries isn't looking peachy either.
A libertarian paradise where your money is used to build roads and buildings which nobody uses; and where it is illegal to broadcast depictions of homosexuality, recreational drug use, or the european occult.
I also encourage you to look a bit deeper at the issue of the legal system. I think your tune will change the moment you're put to death for juggling carrots you don't own while drunk.
compared to US, where your taxes are used to sponsor similar type of paranoid spying state and of course also sponsoring illegal wars half around the world without any good reason, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians directly, millions indirectly. yeah, big difference...
> East Asia has the highest average IQ on the globe
I'd have to see a vast amount of unbiased supporting evidence to believe such an outlandish claim.
The actual results sure don't indicate that's the case: Japan's 25 year disaster, collapsing standards of living and generally very poorly run economy. Cambodia. Laos. Philippines. Vietnam. North Korea. China's vast poverty and pollution, extremely poor system of government and hyper debt problems. Taiwan has half the standard of living of advanced Western European nations. South Korea's economy is particularly unimpressive compared to the US and much of Western Europe. And of course then there's Eastern Russia, which is a big part of East Asia, no need to elaborate on their condition.
Where's the empirical evidence for such a bold IQ claim? There isn't even scientific production evidence to support it versus the US and Western Europe.
The evidence I have seen suggests a modestly higher average IQ in East Asian countries, between 104 and 106 whereas European countries can be from 98 to 102. I think cultural factors such as work ethic and valuing education matter more in real life.
Generally numbers like those coming out of the region are based on underrepresentative samples of high achievers. You may be thinking of Lynn's IQ and Global Inequality.
Is there anyone other than Americans who even believe in IQ? Where I come from talking about IQ will put you in the same category of people who believe in chemtrails.
Not an expert, but there seems to be a preponderance of evidence that IQ has predictive power. It's probably less popular in places with a sordid past of Social Darwinism, such as Germany or plantation societies like the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies.
Considering IQ is measured as a population statistic with 100 set as the average 104-106 looks "interesting. And no you cant compare populations so easily since most tests are not invariant across populations.
> The bottom line, East Asia has the highest average IQ on the globe, and China produces almost 4x engineer degrees each year of what US has.
The quality of most of those degrees is lacking. If you look at high quality output, then China lags the US; many Chinese students still dream of heading to the states for grad school.
Here the ideological elite is set out to prove that everybody is equally capable, and IQ is a construct. The creation of value is increasingly being replaced by value redistribution among the poorest and value transference among the upper middle classes. In corporations, professional management is replacing value creation with politics and stupid games. Yesterday I watched two people launching a professional DJI Inspire drone. The iPad app for this drone is more complicated than Airbnb or Uber apps. I am not talking about the drone itself.. DJI is a Chinese drone company with a billion dollar revenue. The consequences of these trends will be rather grim for the American economy in 30 years. I expect to get about -7 karma for this , since denial is the crucial part of the problem.
The US has nothing to fear from China, any more than they did Japan a quarter century ago. China is drowning in the greatest accumulation of debt in world history, it's going to choke off their economy for generations to come. They'll refuse - as they're doing now - to put down the zombie corporations, perfectly copying the mistakes Japan made. They'll endlessly stimulate with debt while they sink lower. The prediction about China growing old before it becomes wealthy at the median, is already in the third inning of happening.
And further proof of China being a non-threat: US manufacturing has grown dramatically since China's manufacturing came onto the global scene 30 plus years ago. The US economy has grown dramatically, while China's economy boomed. US standards of living have not contracted; quite the opposite, more people have moved up out of the middle class in the US, than down out of it, over the last 30 years. The US has the world's second highest household median disposable income level, which hasn't been diminished at all by China's rise. The US has seen no significant damage to its ability to create full-time employment, or possess a low unemployment rate. The US hasn't lost its wealth position in the world in the last 30 years, still owning around 43% to 45% of all private global wealth. The US has seen no damage to the USD global reserve currency with the modest rise of the Yuan, it has mostly taken position from other second tier currencies.
So, where's the evidence supporting damage - now or in the near future - exactly? There has been none. If anything the US has benefited from China and is likely to continue to do so.
I think most of the innovations and trends mentioned in this article are also true in Africa and India: primacy of the smartphone over computer, importance of chat apps, daily functions like payments integrated into the phone, etc.
The common thread is that each area has had millions of people ascend into the middle class after cell and then smartphones were "good enough" to replace landlines and PCs.
"All other things (education, market) being equal, the biggest pool should generate the most hits, and the most advancement.
reply"
The problem is there are many, many, many factors. Too many to count.
'Education' - even that is hardly comparable. Rote learning/memorization, a culture of copying vs. a culture of learning in innovation. I'm not saying one is better or that one country is necessarily more of the other, just giving one small example of quite radically differentiation even in one comparable vertical.
It's really hard to compare US and China tech side by side.
I think it's best to just look at them independently.
And I hope they become number one in journalism because frankly the NYT is a shell of its former self. It's more of "all the news fit for clickbait" rather than print.
I'm upvoting this post, the article reads like sponsored content is rife with factual inaccuracies. Not sure if Paul Mozur is a shill (must be hard to report the truth from Dongcheng) or just incompetent.
I disagree with the assessment of shillage. It's just another article in the vein of "scary Orientals and their Tiger Moms are outperforming us!" Mozur's article would better be categorized as a lazy sensation article.
A sliver of merit exists in the article; Chinese internet companies do match American ones when it comes to scaling their infrastructure. Many Chinese software developers, designers, and architects are similarly talented as their American counterparts.
Otherwise, this department-store-esque vertical integration of different features is just an artifact of the domination of fewer players with SOE connections and not a sign of dominant innovation. Is payment provider lock-in really something the rest of the world wants to emulate? At least American consumers can choose between 3 major credit companies.
Could you point out the inaccuracies? Aside from the QR code non-sequitor, nothing jumped out at me.
> Could you point out the inaccuracies? Aside from the QR code non-sequitor, nothing jumped out at me.
It's an article about homegrown internet services that does not mention the Great Firewall, as you alluded to somewhat. Given the myriad reasons listed for the services' success, this could be considered by some as a lie by omission.
I feel that this is a typical NY Times tech puff piece:
"Already in China, more people use their mobile devices to pay their bills, order services, watch videos and find dates than anywhere else in the world. Mobile payments in the country last year surpassed those in the United States."
Yes this tends to happen when you have a population of 1.2 billion people compared to 330 million.
Also seeing how outside of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong you need a VPN(and even this is a constant game of whack-a-mole) to access Facebook and Google, it's hardly a level playing field. Economic nationalism in China has been discussed pretty extensively at this point.
"But China’s tech industry — particularly its mobile businesses — has in some ways pulled ahead of the United States. Some Western tech companies, even the behemoths, are turning to Chinese firms for ideas."
Nowhere in the article does it go on to substantiate how they have "pulled ahead." Have they pulled ahead by using QR codes? By using dating apps? Have they pulled ahead because of in app purchasing? (Hello, Uber Eats?)
Different cultures respond differently to different services, this is evidenced by US/European music streaming apps that have had a real difficult time getting traction in the Asian market. Does this mean they have "pulled ahead" and are now setting the pace? Perhaps ocal entrepreneurs understand their local market and culture better?
the censorship brigade killed this post from someone else so, reposting (he's mostly right):
Ugh, this US/China dichotomy makes for good headlines but I hope the good people of the actual tech industry are able to see beyond it. The supporting examples are ripe with confirmation bias: - Yes, MoMo is older than Tinder but Badoo is older than MoMo - Drones took off worldwide - "walkie-talkie" = sending audio messages are you kidding me - QR codes were tried and not adopted by consumers in EU a century ago (recall the Economist being all up in arms about how they were going to revolutionize everything back in 08), no wonder companies were reluctant to bring them back
Yes, Messenger surely wants to become wx but with a user base that's infinitely more fragmented -- it's going to take infinitely longer to launch a global payments solution that partners with all banks everywhere and obeys all regulations.
You know why apps start in wx? Because there is no single app store.
Yes -- China has some awesome mobile stuff going on, but this whole "TIL Chinese people also use the internet and it has other stuff???" fascination is just sad.
In CHN, lacking of credit card and personal credit records make internet industry find a efficient and fast way to receive payments —— that's why alipay and other third party payment such popular. Although just some Paypal copies in the beginning, they are such behemoths now.
I keep hearing this thing about lack of credit cards in China being one of the reasons Alipay and, later, WeChat payments, took off. But I don't see how credit cards are relevant here.
It takes 15 minutes to open a bank account and get a bank card which can be used at ATMs, POS transactions, and online. 'No credit card' doesn't mean 'no bank card'.
It basically means the lacking of credit systems and mature fraud detections. If you lose your (credit) card or leak your credit card number, the bank won't probably reimburse your financial losses. Compared to credit cards, mobile payments may be more secure.
For example, even in countries like Spain, buying a new car and making payments is a new concept.
Without functioning consumer credit, some industries have a hard time.
A functional credit system is fairly essential.
Alibaba in some ways solved that problem by providing guarantees, escrow-ish stuff. More than anything 'credibility' is the value add in a region wherein there is/was little.
the problem is on the merchant side. if you're selling $1 bowls of noodle in a small town, buying a POS to read cards is pretty darn expensive, the CC fees are expensive, and there is no real incentive to be the first guy on the block with a POS.
Sounds like the greatest advantage China has is a non-segmented software eco-system where a few companies dominate the market with apps that can do many things. In contrast to the US where companies focus on just a few key features and users have multiple apps doing various tasks.
There are definitely pros and cons of both ecosystems. But from the common everyday user's perspective, I can see how China's ecosystem is more user friendly. Perhaps that's also why they have traditionally non-tech savvy adopters (farmers, fruit stand owners) using these apps.
China has the advantage of adoption en mass of mobile tech due mainly majority people has access to the net via mobile. Mobile payment is common. And they have a whole money making industry build on top of live tv apps (like vine, periscope). Scale and speed of adoption are keys. China has less tech people who're fixate to certain "ideology" such as JavaScript everywhere, HTML5 for everything, functional all the way etc. They just choose the tech that makes money. China is cutting edge in making use of tech to make money.
"in China, its three major internet companies — Alibaba, Baidu and the WeChat parent Tencent — compete to create a single app with as many functions as they can stuff into it"
It's not obvious to me that this is a good thing. Doesn't this just pass the buck down from the phone's operating system and app ecosystem to the do-everything-app's ecosystem? I'd sooner see mobile OS and app software improve their inter-app communication and APIs so that the do-everything app isn't necessary.
A little off topic, but non-tech people in the USA seem to have unrealistically negative views of China's tech abilities. Yesterday morning 4 non-tech friends and I were getting our exercise working in our community garden and all 4 of them were going on about how far advanced the USA was compared to China. I pointed out that at least in my field, a good fraction of new research papers are from Chinese researchers and I also gave them the example of WeChat pay.
WeChat is the old AOL/Compuserve concept on mobile, nothing more,nothing less.
An abstraction layer on the Internet, needed for China due to the langauge barrier of the Western/English-language Internet/WWW.
Most of the stuff the West uses on the Internet is utterly useless for Chinese (also due to blockage by the Great Firewall), hence a walled garden makes perfect sense.
I don't think China's mobile tech is leading the world rather than Silicon Valley. Most cutting edge of mobile tech is still sourced from US or EU. But you have to admit China's big companies and Alibaba and Tencent or some unicorns really integrate techs, business and people's life better and faster.
mobile was the next big thing ten years ago and US was the key innovator there. Now SV has next next big things around AI and VA/AR and is certainly leading and going to lead here. So it is not surprising that SV might not be leading in mobile anymore, even though such a claim is still questionable
Baidu is no as slouch. Most of the Bay Area is much closer to mobile than ai/vr. I don't think we value mobile in the US; many with money are resistant to change. Some people still don't use email and are shocked(!) when retail stores now require one to ship to the home address.
I'll admit, I've never gotten Apple Pay to work myself. The interface is confusing as hell; I prefer cash or plastic.
and wechat is indeed in the center of this system. For example, a fruit stand would now accept mobile payment via wechat. those who run fruit stands are usually farmers.
I think it makes a lot of sense to build mobile payment into a a social app. because any currency would require a social network. and transferring money is a key social activity.
building independent mobile payment without the support from a mature social network is a bad idea, for example square and apple pay (only useable in the apple ecosystem, a partial mobile ecosystem).
China never seemed to have a credit card era, it jumped directly from paying cash to paying with mobile. whereas in the U.S., credit card is so convenient, people don't want to change.
for many years, wechat has been combining new features with its social network, whereas whatsapp wanted to be a pure chatting app and missed many opportunities.
you can use wechat to order food at restaurants, you can log into public wifi with wechat ....
This is just one example. Another thing I noticed is online shopping. At the gate of our apartment, each day, there are many deliver guys on tricycles. They have a more efficient and cheap delivering system.
For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.
This is not a complex idea, but hard to implement in the U.S., because we don't have the same population density here. When you build an infrastructure like this, you want to serve as many people as possible.