Has China technologically advanced over the West?
Cash is no longer in circulation, and almost everything in daily life happens through mobile apps, even begging.
BeijingOutside a Beijing supermarket, an elderly woman begs for money from customers leaving with shopping bags. She wears a laminated card with a QR code around her neck, which she shows as she asks for money for food. If you scan the code with your phone, you can give her any amount you want, and it will go directly to her mobile wallet account. Eight years ago, the same woman, who is especially visible after summer, did the same thing, but she collected money in cash.
This is an extreme example of how technology has been implemented and popularized in China. You can practically do nothing without your phone. Cash, and even physical credit cards, have disappeared. The homeless woman wouldn't be receiving handouts if she hadn't embraced this technological shift.
The mobile phone has become a vital assistant. Wen, a 26-year-old international business graduate, orders and pays for her coffee on the subway to work and picks it up on her way to the office from one of the 20,000 locations that Luckin Coffee has across the country, designed to allow customers to purchase coffee and other beverages via their app. She can also choose from other local competitors such as Cotti Coffee, M Stand, or Manner. These cheaper Chinese brands have reduced the market share of the giant Starbucks.
The figures in China are important because they are a key part of the success of rapid development: 1.4 billion people represent a huge market of both consumers and workers, making it possible to quickly test technology. Wen is just one of the 230 million customers Luckin Coffee had by the end of 2024.
At midday, Wen will also order lunch through an app and have it delivered to his workplace, and, of course, do his shopping—from groceries to clothes and gifts. Travel, hotels, museum tickets, movies, concerts, gym reservations, weekend mountain hikes, calligraphy or English lessons, online games, banking services, moving services, doctor's appointments, and even AI-trained virtual friends… A whole range of possibilities concentrated on your mobile phone, and, "like your home, it has its own home,"
China seduces with its technology. Seen from the perspective of a European tourist, a trip to China can be experienced as a journey into the future: it's a visit to a world without cash, where you pay with a mobile app or even facial recognition. In hotels, robots greet you at reception and bring towels up to your room. Most cities have a spectacular skyline Of tall, recently built skyscrapers, with neon signs on their facades, and electric cars and motorcycles circulating on the strangely silent city streets.
And seen from a Catalan perspective, it's an ideal world where trains are modern and usually run on time. Although we mustn't forget that in China trains are long-distance, since there are no commuter trains because these journeys are made by bus.
Countryside and city, several Chinas
But there are many Chinas, and the gap between the major cities, which have developed over the last thirty years, and the countryside remains vast.
Yun, a 56-year-old English teacher, has witnessed China's great transformation firsthand. She acknowledges that technology makes life easier, since you can buy things and take care of many everyday tasks with your mobile phone, but she rejects the notion that China is more advanced than Europe. "Perhaps in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen, the standard of living could be considered similar, but that's not the case in the rest of the country."
She points out that in many other areas, such as healthcare, financial services, and food security, China is still a developing country. These three issues are of great concern to the middle class.
Although scandals as large as the one that erupted in 2008 with the adulteration of infant formula with melamine, which affected nearly 300,000 babies and caused the deaths of six, are no longer common, there is still a steady trickle of news about food fraud.
Yun is also concerned, as a teacher, that technology "makes people clumsier, and young people no longer know how to count, which also affects their ability to think," she adds. Another of her criticisms is that the ease of payment offered by mobile phones also means that "people lose awareness of what they spend." As an anecdote, she explains that her five-year-old grandson "doesn't know what money is and thinks you just have to swipe your hand on your phone endlessly." She insists that it is very difficult to explain to him that it is necessary to work to have money to be able to buy things.
The empire of networks and applications
Xiao, 29, admits to being addicted to the social network Xiaohongshu (Petit Llibre Roig), where people share experiences, opinions, and information on all sorts of topics: restaurants, travel destinations, news, work, therapies… The app is a mix of TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and among male users, it helps women find out what they like.
She believes that in China, apps and logistics services are more developed and make life easier compared to other countries. For example, she explains that on a trip to Australia, she developed a fever one night and couldn't find a pharmacy that would deliver medication to her hotel in the early hours, something that is very easy in Beijing, since in addition to the usual home delivery, there are Paoutui, a courier service that transports anything you want door-to-door for very low prices. She also mentions that, in her experience, the wait time for food delivery in Singapore is excessively long compared to Beijing.
She forces herself to cook at least two days a week, but the reality is that a large part of the population orders food delivery through apps, generating huge amounts of plastic and cardboard waste. Xiao says there's no awareness of this problem in China, but instead, the government runs campaigns to prevent unfair competition and stop platforms from selling very cheap food by cutting into the profits of both the delivery driver and the restaurant.
She attributes China's technological advantage to the country's large population and competition: "We have many companies that have to compete to survive, and that forces them to innovate and offer good services."
She agrees with Yun that there's a huge social gap between big cities and rural areas. She cites her hometown of Kaifeng, in Henan province, as an example. She calls it a town, but it has more than four and a half million inhabitants. There, mobile payments aren't as widespread, and she believes they should account for 50% of transactions, while the other half are still made in cash. She understands that this is because there are more elderly people who prefer cash, including her parents, although they are making progress and are already asking questions of the Chinese AI DeepSeek.
It's surprising that despite having a somewhat critical view of mobile phones, because she believes they isolate people (for example, she has forbidden her boyfriend from looking at his phone while they eat together), she trusts the services offered, even for sensitive matters like medical consultations.
She demonstrates on her phone how a consultation with a doctor can be done online through multiple apps for around €6 for a voice call, and for €9 for a 15-minute video call. When asked if she would trust such a diagnosis, she seems surprised and points out that the apps include doctors' resumes and whether they work at a reputable hospital, and that user reviews are also available. Her trust in social media seems absolute.
Addiction and Control
Xiang, a 32-year-old translator, is more critical. Although she acknowledges that her life revolves around her mobile phone and she couldn't live without it, she warns of the risk of addiction and the exacerbation of mental health problems. She states that "there are young people who no longer want to leave the house," since shopping, games, information, and entertainment are all found on their phones. "It's even fashionable to create boyfriends with AI," she asserts, while showing on her phone the tutorials published to teach AI what the ideal partner should be like.
In China, mental illness is highly stigmatized, and there are hardly any psychologists or psychiatrists. AI, which is especially popular among teenagers, could become a risk when it comes to solving these kinds of problems.
Mobile phone use makes it easy for the government to control your entire life, since they know what you buy, what you spend, who your friends are, where you travel, what music or movies you like, the comments you make on social media... In China, companies are legally obligated to share the data they collect with the government.
Xiang believes that in addition to control, the government also intervenes in social media to promote policies. She gives the example of how, in the current economic crisis, they are trying to stimulate consumption, and therefore most platforms and apps offer one-click credit purchases without any paperwork. She explains that you can buy anything on credit, from small things like groceries to a car. But because it's so easy, it can lead to debt problems, since people aren't aware of how much they spend. Interest rates can reach 20% if you don't pay on time, and in just a few months, debts multiply. Furthermore, the debt recovery systems are very aggressive. Companies access the entire network of contacts and call them to warn that the individual has a debt and needs to be convinced to pay. "My mother has received up to five calls a day from a company demanding payment from one of the building's doormen, with whom she barely has any contact," explains Xiang, horrified.
China has undergone a great transformation in the last three decades, allowing its population to make a great economic and technological leap. It has benefited from long-term planned policies and a large social base that generated a vast market at various scales. But the reality of the major cities is far removed from the standard of living in rural China. Therefore, despite the progress, the country, with its continental dimensions, continues to develop at different speeds.
