4 ms·

Can you tell us more about how the government picked the winner?

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Under COVID, when being able to board public transport, enter venues, etc. required showing one’s health status from one’s phone, the Chinese state facilitated that through two apps in particular: WeChat and Alipay.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  That sounds like a duopoly, but it's still surprising that there was no third option at all. Are you sure they couldn't even bring printed out forms?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    > Are you sure they couldn't even bring printed out forms? In China your health status (green/yellow/red) was automatically calculated based on what neighborhoods of the city you had been in, what other people you passed by in the street or on public transportation, etc. So, it could change in an instant, and that is why it was shown from phone apps that constantly updated. It wasn’t a fixed thing like vaccination status, where a printed form would make sense.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      yes and no. you needed regular testing and in most cases you only needed to show that you had a clean test. you could get that on paper, it just wasn't practical. i had the issue that sometimes the test station was not able to enter my data because i don't have a chinese ID. in that case they had to print out the test results and i would use those. when i travelled that sometimes meant that they sent me a photo of the results because i did a test in the morning in one city, but the results were not available until i arrived in the other city. to get your digital travel status there was an app you could download (actually each province hat their own app) and you registered on that with your phone number and passport details (or chinese ID). no wechat or alipay required. if you didn't have a working phone then you could log in to that app on any other phone at see your status there. in theory it was possible to travel without a phone and not have the fact that you travelled reflect in the app, but in practice it was not worth the trouble.
- kredd 3y ago
  WeChat was ubiquitous in China way before the incident. It’s simply being practical and using a method that almost everyone has access to. Whether it was a correct way to do so or not is a different topic.

Under COVID, when being able to board public transport, enter venues, etc. required showing one’s health status from one’s phone, the Chinese state facilitated that through two apps in particular: WeChat and Alipay.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
That sounds like a duopoly, but it's still surprising that there was no third option at all. Are you sure they couldn't even bring printed out forms?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > Are you sure they couldn't even bring printed out forms? In China your health status (green/yellow/red) was automatically calculated based on what neighborhoods of the city you had been in, what other people you passed by in the street or on public transportation, etc. So, it could change in an instant, and that is why it was shown from phone apps that constantly updated. It wasn’t a fixed thing like vaccination status, where a printed form would make sense.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    yes and no. you needed regular testing and in most cases you only needed to show that you had a clean test. you could get that on paper, it just wasn't practical. i had the issue that sometimes the test station was not able to enter my data because i don't have a chinese ID. in that case they had to print out the test results and i would use those. when i travelled that sometimes meant that they sent me a photo of the results because i did a test in the morning in one city, but the results were not available until i arrived in the other city. to get your digital travel status there was an app you could download (actually each province hat their own app) and you registered on that with your phone number and passport details (or chinese ID). no wechat or alipay required. if you didn't have a working phone then you could log in to that app on any other phone at see your status there. in theory it was possible to travel without a phone and not have the fact that you travelled reflect in the app, but in practice it was not worth the trouble.
kredd 3y ago
WeChat was ubiquitous in China way before the incident. It’s simply being practical and using a method that almost everyone has access to. Whether it was a correct way to do so or not is a different topic.