It used to be worse than that, until only VERY recently you need a China bank account to set up WeChat payments, and you need a China +86 mobile number to set u

It used to be worse than that, until only VERY recently you need a China bank account to set up WeChat payments, and you need a China +86 mobile number to set up a bank account. Granted, if you are fluent in local language you can get a mobile number and bank account in less than an hour if you go first thing in the morning to beat the lines, but for tourists who do not speak Chinese it is basically damn near impossible to navigate setting all that up. That said, international tourism isn't a big revenue generator, they care FAR more about the domestic tourism market, which is many times bigger. Foreign tourists are largely an afterthought. Even now, domestic tourists can just tap their national ID card to board trains but tourists usually have to stand in line to buy paper tickets, or even if you get your bank account and all set up to buy tickets online, you'll still need to stand in line to print out the ticket because the electronic readers at train boarding gates don't support reading passports or foreign IDs of any sort.