11 ms·

In some ways, the tier one cities in China are more advanced than their Western counterparts. E.g. mobile payment platforms are ubiquitous, app-mediated deliver

In some ways, the tier one cities in China are more advanced than their Western counterparts. E.g. mobile payment platforms are ubiquitous, app-mediated delivery of food is profitable and sustainable, taxi companies and bikes are more accessible. The last time I was in a cafe, all I had to do was scan a QR code, select some items on a menu, and press a button to pay and have it delivered to my table. The tech ecosystem has evolved in a very different way than the US, but not at all in an obviously worse way: I'd expect Tencent and Alibaba to outperform the US tech giants over the next ten years. It's mostly insularity that makes Americans think that China is massively backwards technologically. The biggest issue moving into the future is the national government's hostility toward foreigners, even foreign professionals. Even then, though, a billion people gives you a lot to work with.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
winrid 6y ago
You had to scan a QR code?? :) When I was in China this year there were places where you paid just by scanning your face (this was for street food....)
- gruez 6y ago
  I doubt it's used as a primary means of identification. Apple's faceid has trouble identifying some siblings and twins. I can't imagine how many impossible-to-discern faces there are in a country with a billion people.
  - eunos 6y ago
    I saw already on TikTok someone utilized Alipay face payment while wearing a mask. So I assume the Computer Vision is quite good.
    - gruez 6y ago
      I'm not sure whether that proves anything or not. It could be a tech demo or publicity stunt, for instance. If anything, if the first time you're hearing about it is through a tiktok video, rather than some sort of press release or news story, makes me think it's not a real production system.
      - winrid 6y ago
        It's real. It's also not new in China. At quite a few places we HAD to use face identification. To check into a hotel for instance a computer scans your face in some provinces.
        gruez 6y ago
        My original comment said I doubted it was used as a primary means of identification. I have no doubt that they use it as a second factor, but using it as the only factor (ie. based on a face scan alone, determining who to bill) is doubtful.
        scarmig 6y ago
        For what it's worth, I can confirm that I've seen my girlfriend use facial recognition to identify and authenticate herself and authorize payment via Alipay at a self checkout at a grocery store, using a camera on the self checkout machine. She probably got a message on her phone once she did, but there was no second factor.
      - eunos 6y ago
        The tiktok I watched was something similar to daily VLOG so I am pretty sure it is not a demo or trial product but a general purpose one.
      - eunos 6y ago
        This is the video that I saw btw https://www.tiktok.com/@roger311/video/6816922140231601414?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@roger311/video/6816922140231601414?l...
derex 6y ago
The Chinese general public don't value information privacy as much as the Western counterparts. Mass surveillance could become a huge problem if the tech keeps evolving while the public awareness lags behind. And that is assuming it's not already a problem. If you think about how much tracking data you hand out when all your social activities are facilitated by one app (wechat), and the fact that giant Chinese tech companies are known to corroborate government surveillance...
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  you don't think the US companies don't corroborate with US gov surveillance or Google doesn't track user data?
  - NotACop182 6y ago
    Try having end to end encryption in China without the government having full access. In the west at least this is possible.
    - pavs 6y ago
      Have you heard of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?
    - disambiguation 6y ago
      true for now, but western governments are getting envious of china (ex. earn it act https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s3398 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s3398)
      - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        Getting? Always wanted... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip Edit: While I'm at it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG , ah yes, there was something else ...lemme' ssink... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON I could go on and on...
Udik 6y ago
As a young and very proud Chinese colleague of mine put it: "in technology, the US are ten years ahead of Europe; China is ten years ahead of the US"
- conorgdaly 6y ago
  Is that a comment on confidently ignorant youthful comments or is that anecdote something you think resembles truth because someone once said it. It was spoken; therefore it is?
wahern 6y ago
Newer != more advanced. ~20 years ago I remember people arguing that Latin American telecommunications infrastructure was "more advanced" than in the U.S. simply because per capita cellular usage was greater. If you Google that claim today, it's still being made regarding Latin America vs Canada. But what those figures actually represent is that their wired infrastructure is poor and unreliable in Latin America. The degree to which an economy is "advanced" has more to do with institutional systems and processes, not whether they're using the latest tech. Often times the latest tech papers over institutional deficiencies, but only superficially. Mobile payment platforms have been ubiquitous in Africa for many years, but nobody would say that Africa's banking system is "advanced" or that it's capable of supporting the needs of an advanced financial sector. They became ubiquitous in Africa first precisely because of institutional deficiencies. Mobile payments solved some of the most visible consequences, but by itself it didn't go very far in addressing the underlying problems. Sure, it's easy to pay a vendor for lunch or a pair of sneakers using your phone, but what matters infinitely more is how safe and reliable it is to secure a $2,000,000 LoC to help bring your factory online. Old systems in older economies persist because they work, or at least work well enough. If China overtakes the U.S. in technology dominance, it's because they've spent 30 years studying, copying, and improving upon American legal, financial, and business management systems. Notwithstanding the fact that they are serving the interests and demands of the Communist Party, which often puts them in a lose-lose scenario, China's economists and policy advisers understand the systems of modern capitalism better than most of their Western counterparts.
- scarmig 6y ago
  There are some philosophical questions involved about what is "advanced": is it purely a matter of timeliness? Of what requires a more sophisticated set of institutions to sustain? Who has more advanced weaponry: a civilization with barely functioning firearms, or one with arcane but sophisticated metallurgy to forge durable, sharp swords? Comparing consumer payment infrastructure in the US and China, there is really no comparison. For me, in cost, convenience, and security (against the threat models I'm concerned with), China wins on every factor, by significant margins. Except opening a bank account. A month after I moved to China, I got a fraud notification. From what? It turned out a gas station in Oakland had a skimmer. I'm told stuff like that simply can't happen in China (which I take with a grain of salt, but I have a hard time imagining what fraud vectors there are).
blueblisters 6y ago
In software products and AI/Machine Learning China is at best half a decade behind the US. In hardware and robotics, China is already way ahead of the US (except certain fundamental blocks like semiconductors). Anecdotally, I remember competing against Chinese robotics teams as a college student. It's a myth that the Chinese are not innovative - their engineering is top notch and they routed the competition with hardware tech that had never been seen before in an academic setting. More surprisingly, they freely share their designs with other Chinese teams, cultivating a culture of open hardware. Here's a video of a Chinese robot throwing balls through a hoop and landing them on a platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUZgMrl7qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUZgMrl7qQ
- scarmig 6y ago
  I'd be very curious to understand where China stands vis a vis US military tech. You never know how things would play out until they actually do, but it is clear that China has put their bets on "disruptive" military tech, instead of dropping tens of billions onto carrier fleets.
  - mardifoufs 6y ago
    The US military manages to do both because it can afford to. Carrier fleets are pretty much required for global military force projection, something China isn't even close to have the capability to start thinking about at this stage. The chinese military is way, way behind in pretty much all regards and even going for "disruptive tech" won't do them much good when they can't even manage to design/produce a working jet engine for their fighter jets that isn't complete garbage. They basically resorted to copying 1980s russian designed engines, but couldn't get the metallurgy right so they just imported them. You can't start to compare with the US military capability if even Russia can be much better than you at producing something as basic (in terms of military needs) as a jet engine
    - gexla 6y ago
      Right, any comparison would need to be done within the context of what they are optimizing for. China's priority right now seems to be securing the S. China Sea. There's also nuclear weapons as a concern. I'm not sure we're quite talking mutually assured destruction, but we wouldn't want to go there. So far, nuclear deterrence has held up. There's a lot of ways to fight a war. Conventional military technology likely wouldn't be involved on any battleground we would find ourselves on with China.
dirtyid 6y ago
A lot of the conveniences in tier1 cities is predicated on fusion of income disparity and technology. That doesn't make your claim untrue - there's certainly a lot more indulgences being upper-middle class living in a tier1 Chinese city, and there are advantages to such an unjust developmental model. But ultimately it's not something to aspire towards, even though the west seems to be trending that way regardless.
- moreorless 6y ago
  Is the income disparity bigger in China or in the US?
  - thejynxed 6y ago
    China by far. Our homeless have iPhones, their homeless get run over by trucks and public busses without any consequence and suffer the indignity of being forced to perform labor to be able to use a toilet. Now if you mean the lowest overall classes, I've been to rural areas in China where the entire community shits in a hole dug in the ground, it gets filled, a new one is dug. They also all share a single water source. We're talking a few hundred people here. On the opposite end of the spectrum I've met someone in Shenzen who owns two houses in London, one in Toronto, and one in Hawaii. Each house is nicely furnished and has a few luxury sports cars to choose from.
    - moreorless 6y ago
      I live in San Francisco and I see indignities on our streets on a daily basis.
  - dirtyid 6y ago
    China due to very uneven development, but the stratification is more organized and part of the development strategy, i.e. cheap labour makes the construction projects and gig service models viable in ways that are not in the west. There's migrant labour / houkou (domestic passport) system that controls the availability of rural labour pools between provinces, hence tier1 cities has a lever to reduce number of poor in the region to amounts sufficient to support industry and businesses. The result is you actually have less visible vagrancy - migrants who can't afford to the city gets displaced to less developed provinces with lower costs. You will not find as many homeless people in a tier1 Chinese city compared to many western countries. At least not anymore, there was a lot in the 90s. Note: it's not an issue of hiding the poor but being able to optimize disparity over regions with different development levels. To dovetail, this system still exist in the west in the form of agricultural migrant workers, their work is outside of populated areas so it's more palatable.
ksec 6y ago
Are there any reason why that "Tech" or model cant happen in US? It really has nothing about technological advance. If you can get the living cost and wages low enough you could make deliver works, profitable and sustainable. If the average POS system does not charge 10 to 100x of those in China there no reason why restaurant cant have them in US. I see it as economic difference. Not so much about technology in itself.
OnlineCourage 6y ago
The examples you gave were all developed and used first in the United States.
DeonPenny 6y ago
Most of things aren't the future. Most of those things are whats wrong with china tech because no one actually wants them. They are usually more expensive than just hiring a person or older tech. And really they've been forced onto people by the government from what a lot of people see.
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
> delivery of food is profitable It is profitable because labor is cheaper, a quality associated with less advanced economies.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

winrid 6y ago

You had to scan a QR code?? :) When I was in China this year there were places where you paid just by scanning your face (this was for street food....)

gruez 6y ago
I doubt it's used as a primary means of identification. Apple's faceid has trouble identifying some siblings and twins. I can't imagine how many impossible-to-discern faces there are in a country with a billion people.
- eunos 6y ago
  I saw already on TikTok someone utilized Alipay face payment while wearing a mask. So I assume the Computer Vision is quite good.
  - gruez 6y ago
    I'm not sure whether that proves anything or not. It could be a tech demo or publicity stunt, for instance. If anything, if the first time you're hearing about it is through a tiktok video, rather than some sort of press release or news story, makes me think it's not a real production system.
    - winrid 6y ago
      It's real. It's also not new in China. At quite a few places we HAD to use face identification. To check into a hotel for instance a computer scans your face in some provinces.
      - gruez 6y ago
        My original comment said I doubted it was used as a primary means of identification. I have no doubt that they use it as a second factor, but using it as the only factor (ie. based on a face scan alone, determining who to bill) is doubtful.
        scarmig 6y ago
        For what it's worth, I can confirm that I've seen my girlfriend use facial recognition to identify and authenticate herself and authorize payment via Alipay at a self checkout at a grocery store, using a camera on the self checkout machine. She probably got a message on her phone once she did, but there was no second factor.
    - eunos 6y ago
      The tiktok I watched was something similar to daily VLOG so I am pretty sure it is not a demo or trial product but a general purpose one.
    - eunos 6y ago
      This is the video that I saw btw https://www.tiktok.com/@roger311/video/6816922140231601414?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@roger311/video/6816922140231601414?l...

derex 6y ago

The Chinese general public don't value information privacy as much as the Western counterparts. Mass surveillance could become a huge problem if the tech keeps evolving while the public awareness lags behind. And that is assuming it's not already a problem. If you think about how much tracking data you hand out when all your social activities are facilitated by one app (wechat), and the fact that giant Chinese tech companies are known to corroborate government surveillance...

kyawzazaw 6y ago
you don't think the US companies don't corroborate with US gov surveillance or Google doesn't track user data?
- NotACop182 6y ago
  Try having end to end encryption in China without the government having full access. In the west at least this is possible.
  - pavs 6y ago
    Have you heard of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?
  - disambiguation 6y ago
    true for now, but western governments are getting envious of china (ex. earn it act https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s3398 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s3398)
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      Getting? Always wanted... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip Edit: While I'm at it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG , ah yes, there was something else ...lemme' ssink... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON I could go on and on...

Udik 6y ago

As a young and very proud Chinese colleague of mine put it: "in technology, the US are ten years ahead of Europe; China is ten years ahead of the US"

conorgdaly 6y ago
Is that a comment on confidently ignorant youthful comments or is that anecdote something you think resembles truth because someone once said it. It was spoken; therefore it is?

wahern 6y ago

Newer != more advanced. ~20 years ago I remember people arguing that Latin American telecommunications infrastructure was "more advanced" than in the U.S. simply because per capita cellular usage was greater. If you Google that claim today, it's still being made regarding Latin America vs Canada. But what those figures actually represent is that their wired infrastructure is poor and unreliable in Latin America. The degree to which an economy is "advanced" has more to do with institutional systems and processes, not whether they're using the latest tech. Often times the latest tech papers over institutional deficiencies, but only superficially. Mobile payment platforms have been ubiquitous in Africa for many years, but nobody would say that Africa's banking system is "advanced" or that it's capable of supporting the needs of an advanced financial sector. They became ubiquitous in Africa first precisely because of institutional deficiencies. Mobile payments solved some of the most visible consequences, but by itself it didn't go very far in addressing the underlying problems. Sure, it's easy to pay a vendor for lunch or a pair of sneakers using your phone, but what matters infinitely more is how safe and reliable it is to secure a $2,000,000 LoC to help bring your factory online. Old systems in older economies persist because they work, or at least work well enough. If China overtakes the U.S. in technology dominance, it's because they've spent 30 years studying, copying, and improving upon American legal, financial, and business management systems. Notwithstanding the fact that they are serving the interests and demands of the Communist Party, which often puts them in a lose-lose scenario, China's economists and policy advisers understand the systems of modern capitalism better than most of their Western counterparts.

scarmig 6y ago
There are some philosophical questions involved about what is "advanced": is it purely a matter of timeliness? Of what requires a more sophisticated set of institutions to sustain? Who has more advanced weaponry: a civilization with barely functioning firearms, or one with arcane but sophisticated metallurgy to forge durable, sharp swords? Comparing consumer payment infrastructure in the US and China, there is really no comparison. For me, in cost, convenience, and security (against the threat models I'm concerned with), China wins on every factor, by significant margins. Except opening a bank account. A month after I moved to China, I got a fraud notification. From what? It turned out a gas station in Oakland had a skimmer. I'm told stuff like that simply can't happen in China (which I take with a grain of salt, but I have a hard time imagining what fraud vectors there are).

blueblisters 6y ago

In software products and AI/Machine Learning China is at best half a decade behind the US. In hardware and robotics, China is already way ahead of the US (except certain fundamental blocks like semiconductors). Anecdotally, I remember competing against Chinese robotics teams as a college student. It's a myth that the Chinese are not innovative - their engineering is top notch and they routed the competition with hardware tech that had never been seen before in an academic setting. More surprisingly, they freely share their designs with other Chinese teams, cultivating a culture of open hardware. Here's a video of a Chinese robot throwing balls through a hoop and landing them on a platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUZgMrl7qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUZgMrl7qQ

scarmig 6y ago
I'd be very curious to understand where China stands vis a vis US military tech. You never know how things would play out until they actually do, but it is clear that China has put their bets on "disruptive" military tech, instead of dropping tens of billions onto carrier fleets.
- mardifoufs 6y ago
  The US military manages to do both because it can afford to. Carrier fleets are pretty much required for global military force projection, something China isn't even close to have the capability to start thinking about at this stage. The chinese military is way, way behind in pretty much all regards and even going for "disruptive tech" won't do them much good when they can't even manage to design/produce a working jet engine for their fighter jets that isn't complete garbage. They basically resorted to copying 1980s russian designed engines, but couldn't get the metallurgy right so they just imported them. You can't start to compare with the US military capability if even Russia can be much better than you at producing something as basic (in terms of military needs) as a jet engine
  - gexla 6y ago
    Right, any comparison would need to be done within the context of what they are optimizing for. China's priority right now seems to be securing the S. China Sea. There's also nuclear weapons as a concern. I'm not sure we're quite talking mutually assured destruction, but we wouldn't want to go there. So far, nuclear deterrence has held up. There's a lot of ways to fight a war. Conventional military technology likely wouldn't be involved on any battleground we would find ourselves on with China.

dirtyid 6y ago

A lot of the conveniences in tier1 cities is predicated on fusion of income disparity and technology. That doesn't make your claim untrue - there's certainly a lot more indulgences being upper-middle class living in a tier1 Chinese city, and there are advantages to such an unjust developmental model. But ultimately it's not something to aspire towards, even though the west seems to be trending that way regardless.

moreorless 6y ago
Is the income disparity bigger in China or in the US?
- thejynxed 6y ago
  China by far. Our homeless have iPhones, their homeless get run over by trucks and public busses without any consequence and suffer the indignity of being forced to perform labor to be able to use a toilet. Now if you mean the lowest overall classes, I've been to rural areas in China where the entire community shits in a hole dug in the ground, it gets filled, a new one is dug. They also all share a single water source. We're talking a few hundred people here. On the opposite end of the spectrum I've met someone in Shenzen who owns two houses in London, one in Toronto, and one in Hawaii. Each house is nicely furnished and has a few luxury sports cars to choose from.
  - moreorless 6y ago
    I live in San Francisco and I see indignities on our streets on a daily basis.
- dirtyid 6y ago
  China due to very uneven development, but the stratification is more organized and part of the development strategy, i.e. cheap labour makes the construction projects and gig service models viable in ways that are not in the west. There's migrant labour / houkou (domestic passport) system that controls the availability of rural labour pools between provinces, hence tier1 cities has a lever to reduce number of poor in the region to amounts sufficient to support industry and businesses. The result is you actually have less visible vagrancy - migrants who can't afford to the city gets displaced to less developed provinces with lower costs. You will not find as many homeless people in a tier1 Chinese city compared to many western countries. At least not anymore, there was a lot in the 90s. Note: it's not an issue of hiding the poor but being able to optimize disparity over regions with different development levels. To dovetail, this system still exist in the west in the form of agricultural migrant workers, their work is outside of populated areas so it's more palatable.

ksec 6y ago

Are there any reason why that "Tech" or model cant happen in US? It really has nothing about technological advance. If you can get the living cost and wages low enough you could make deliver works, profitable and sustainable. If the average POS system does not charge 10 to 100x of those in China there no reason why restaurant cant have them in US. I see it as economic difference. Not so much about technology in itself.

OnlineCourage 6y ago

The examples you gave were all developed and used first in the United States.

DeonPenny 6y ago

Most of things aren't the future. Most of those things are whats wrong with china tech because no one actually wants them. They are usually more expensive than just hiring a person or older tech. And really they've been forced onto people by the government from what a lot of people see.

TheCoelacanth 6y ago

> delivery of food is profitable It is profitable because labor is cheaper, a quality associated with less advanced economies.