QR in China are different animals. They are not generic QR codes, but encoded instructions to access specific in-app features in WeChat/AliPay. If you scan tho

QR in China are different animals. They are not generic QR codes, but encoded instructions to access specific in-app features in WeChat/AliPay. If you scan those special codes with generic QR readers, you get invalid URLs. IMO this makes it even worse to use generic QR codes, because if a QR code cannot be parsed by WeChat/AliPay, most Chinese users do not know what to do with it.