Four inventions China has made popular
August 16, 2017 Category Macro-economy, Weekly
The Shanghai Daily published an article about China’s “four great new inventions” in modern times: dockless shared bicycles, mobile payments, online shopping and high-speed rail, but skeptics have remarked that none of those have actually been invented in China, although their use in China has raised their popularity.
There are over 30 bike-sharing companies in China that operate around 10 million bicycles in dozens of Chinese cities. The idea of shared bikes originated in Western countries, but China added the idea of station-less shared bikes that can be left anywhere on the street and are traced by the operator through GPS. To unlock a bike, you need to scan a QuickResponse (QR) code through a smartphone app. At the end of the ride, you manually lock the bike and pay for your ride though mobile payment services that are connected with the bike app, such as Alipay and WeChat wallet. China’s two leading bike-sharing operators, Mobike and Ofo, are now gearing up for global expansion. Mobike has already entered Singapore, Manchester, Florence and Milan. Ofo has begun operations in the United States, Britain, Singapore and Kazakhstan.
Another invention is mobile payments, which can now be used to buy almost anything, made it possible to leave your home without taking your wallet, and set China well on the way to become a cashless society. Alipay, or Zhifubao, is China’s leading mobile and online payment service, established in 2004 by Alibaba Group. During the online transaction process, Alipay acts as a third-party platform, on which buyers pay for their goods by scanning a payment code on the Alipay app on their mobile devices. Alipay can also be used for transferring money from one Alipay online account to another account, or to a bank account. Utility bills can also be paid through Alipay, or its main rival WeChat Pay. In 2013, Alipay surpassed Paypal as the world’s largest mobile payment platform.
China has also built the world’s longest high-speed rail (HSR) network with trains running at speeds of 250 to 350 kilometers per hour. At the end of 2016, China operated 2,595 high-speed trains, or 60% of the world’s total high-speed trains. HSR service debuted in China in 2008 with an average annual growth of over 30% in passenger trips. Currently, China is working on next-generation bullet trains with a maximum speed of 400 km/h. By 2020, one fifth of the country’s 150,000-km railway network will be high-speed, linking more than 80% of all major cites.
With 731 million internet users, China is the world’s largest and fastest-growing e-commerce market. In 2016, online shopping in China saw a growth rate of 26.2%, generating CNY5.16 trillion in sales transactions. Last year, online food sales increased 28.5%, while clothing sales rose by 18.1%. E-commerce now accounts for 15.5% of the total retail sales. Leading operators in China’s e-commerce market include JD.com, and Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao.
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