
Welcome to China. You Probably Can't Buy Anything, Though - shantara
https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/20191110751/welcome-to-china-you-probably-cant-buy-anything-though
======
kweks
Until one week ago, the article was correct. Since then, payments in the
Chinese eco system for foreigners is now a solved problem.

AliPay and WeChat recently signed agreements to facilitate foreign card
support.

AliPay (as of one week ago) has full payment functionality for foreigners,
called "TourPass" [0]

Download the app, and click on the 'TourPass' icon (blue suitcase in the top
left). You can now add credit via a foreign credit card.

Inside the TourPass sub-app, you have two options: Scan to Pay (you scan a
code and input how much to pay - peer to peer purchases and small
restaurants), and Payment QR Code (your code gets scanned, and account debited
- transport, etc)

You can transfer money to individuals and receive money as well.

I confirmed this as of last week in China - and was able to make all purchases
(taxi, train, food, supermarket, goods, peer to peer) without any problem.

[0] [https://rapidtravelchai.boardingarea.com/alipay-tour-
pass/](https://rapidtravelchai.boardingarea.com/alipay-tour-pass/)

~~~
spectramax
I don't consider signing up for chinese surveillance system with foreign bank
accounts an acceptable solution.

How about cash?

~~~
yorwba
Then pay cash, like every Chinese person who can't afford a phone.

~~~
spectramax
Article talks about it, quoting the article:

> First it was a shopkeeper at the Great Wall who wouldn't take cash for a
> bottle of water.

> "Ten years ago it was cash for everything. Now it's WeChat for everything,"
> Ms. Sjogren said. "I'm getting used to being a dinosaur in China."

> Foreigners aren't the only ones bewildered by China's fast transition to a
> cashless society. "I can't even eat!" said Gong Cheng, a 61-year-old retired
> Shenzhen auto mechanic, who has resorted to asking strangers to pay for his
> takeout noodles and then giving them money.

> A few weeks later, Mr. Copley, 25, was stranded outside a bar at 4 a.m. He
> finally begged a Chinese couple to call him a taxi on a local ride-hailing
> app and repaid them in cash for the fare.

See how difficult it is? Perhaps in rural areas, it is easier. But in the
cities, everyone has a phone. And, everyone needs WeChat.

~~~
yorwba
> Gong Cheng, a 61-year-old retired Shenzhen auto mechanic

Lives in a city and doesn't seem to have a phone; at least he doesn't have
access to mobile payments. Note that what he can't pay for with cash are
takeout noodles, the kind you order online. I bet he pays cash for everything
else.

Even in the cities, not everyone has a phone, simply because not everyone can
afford one. The less pricey something is, the more likely you'll be able to
pay with cash.

------
spectramax
The centralization of digital payments in China is absolutely terrifying.
Everything is controlled by this one magic app - WeChat in China. I had a hard
time staying there for 3 contiguous months, finally had to get a burner phone
and install WeChat. Because, I was crippled without it.

Ofcourse, everything is linked the moment you get a SIM Card with your
photo/passport. This isn't that surprising, most countries have policies to
check ID before handing you a SIM Card. OTPs are then generated against that
phone and then the entire ecosystem is tracking you. Your entire life is in
WeChat.

Fuck everything about that. I'll take hard, cold, paper cash anyday.

~~~
mav3rick
It's magical when it works. Everyone who has been to China loves it. Cash also
means tax evasion.

~~~
spectramax
It is also magical to not be able to hold a protest against the government,
openly criticize, make fun of their president, rally up anti-government
support, etc.

I am happy to forgo conveniences for privacy and freedom. But those two
concepts do not exist in China.

~~~
Animats
They haven't existed in China back to the days of the emperors. The control
system used to be village-oriented and paper-based, but that didn't scale.
Urbanization reduced control. That problem has been fixed.

The US is getting there. Starting October 1, 2020, "RealID", or a higher level
ID like a passport or Global Entry card, will be required for US domestic air
travel. And entry to Federal buildings, military bases, etc. As yet, it's not
required for employment.

~~~
Lio
In America you can laugh at Donald Trump’s hands all you like.

In China you can’t share memes that compare Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.

As long as that stays true America isn’t there yet and there is hope.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Not even memes, any image of Winnie the Poo.

Growing fascist tendencies in the US are a concern, but there is no question
you have more freedoms in the US.

------
hmwhy
My recent experience has been quite different with using cash in China.

I was aware that most things are now paid with QR codes when I came here a few
months ago, so I brought enough cash with me just in case things go wrong (and
they did), but not once did I have to ask someone to pay for me in the first
two months that they refused to open a bank account for me.

I've taken friends out to popular, touristy places and restaurants when they
visited, and have never encountered a taxi driver who doesn't have cash (the
part about hailing a taxi at weird times in the morning is, as far as I can
tell, true though).

The only _real_ issue was that I felt like people were staring at me like they
have spotted a supposedly-extinct animal whenever I paid with cash. :(

------
elamje
This article makes it sound a lot worse than it is.

Went a couple of years ago and used Google Fi network when traveling. Was
still able to access several services like maps, Yelp etc, but the info was
pretty minimal.

At least in Shanghai and Beijing, never experienced any issues as long as I
had cash or card available. It’s anecdotal, but I promise you can still travel
there. It’s unfortunate if articles like these convince you otherwise.

p.s. Don’t get drinks/coffee/tea with Chinese English speakers unless you know
them. In the big cities it’s almost always a scam if someone walks up to you
and speaks good English. Edit: If a stranger suggests a place to hang out at,
suggest a different place. That is a good test to see if you are about to get
scammed. Many scammers have a particular shop they collude with.

~~~
ilaksh
But that was a couple of years ago and the article says that the trend has
been accelerating.

~~~
elamje
Sure, all I’m saying is that you will survive. The title suggests that you
will not be able to function.

------
bobx11
Sounds like Chinese people traveling would have the same problems outside
China: their usual payment systems don’t work.

It’s good to know that their system is controlled in a way like that, but the
only note of value in this article is that one person's repeat visits show
that it’s more proprietary than years before.

~~~
haunter
> Sounds like Chinese people traveling would have the same problems outside
> China: their usual payment systems don’t work.

Not really, Alipay is available in more and more countries and online as well.
It's really easy to pay with it internationally unlike the other way

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alipay#International_expansion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alipay#International_expansion)

~~~
Jommi
Not true. It hardly really works and even then in just a fragmented set of
retailers.

------
justinzollars
I traveled to China over the summer, and this was a small inconvenience but
when pressed people could never turn down a sale. One lady pulled cash out of
her purse to make change and the deal happened. Its good that they are looking
into a solution to this problem though.

------
_-___________-_
At least a few years ago, you could set WeChat Pay / Alipay up as a tourist,
but it was quite fiddly. You needed a Chinese phone number (easy to get a
prepaid SIM) and then someone needed to send you some money to make the wallet
appear in the app, and then you could use it. You had to get friends to send
you money unless you had a Chinese bank account to top it up with, but Chinese
bank accounts are possible to get as a tourist, if you're willing to spend a
day traipsing around different bank branches until you find one that will
accept you.

~~~
james_s_tayler
I set up a Chinese bank account to do it. I hate cash, so much. It's just so
fiddly. AliPay it awesome in comparison.

I'm glad it's getting easier for foreigners to get more connected to the
payments ecosystem. Makes for a much nicer experience.

------
outime
I only went to China once (Shanghai) less than a year agi and had no problems
with cash. I couldn’t use WeChat as foreign cards weren’t supported back then.
The point is, it’s not that cashless yet.

------
mlacks
> "We felt like little kids who couldn't do anything by ourselves," said Ms.
> Shortes, a junior at Clemson University in South Carolina. "We always had to
> say, 'Please help us!' "

I travel to Harbin, a major Chinese city in the northeast Heilongjiang about
once a year. My group always consists of member of my host country that is at
least marginally conversational in Mandarin (this on the menu please, going to
this area, Mr. Cab Driver), and a native or someone with Native level fluency
(There must be a misunderstanding, I promise we didn't intend to trespass).
Our group leader usually exchanges a few days worth of meals in cash at the
hotel before we leave for the day, but instead of paying for meals, we just
slide our native friend the cash while he/ she scans their WeChat/Alipay app.

This past trip I decided to go rouge and just use my credit cards (unrelated:
most of my credit card providers simply don't have an option to notify them of
international travel "Their sophisticated algorithm detects when you're
traveling"). Most places in the US let you know what digital payment forms
they accept. Almost always Visa/Mastercard, Usually Amex/Discover, rarely
ApplePay/SamsungPay/Google Pay, and - in tourist areas on the west coast and
in Hawaii in my experience - UnionPay (China credit card) or JCB (Japan credit
card).

I expected something similar over in China. Nope - WeChat Pay, Alipay/ Union
Pay or Yuan. Not in Kansas any more.

I managed to install and link my credit card up to both the Alipay/ and WeChat
iOS apps, but they declined my purchase at the counter. Not sure why the app
would "accept" my CC info without doing a test transaction. It turns out you
need a Chinese CC to use the Chinese payment apps, which requires a Chinese
bank account. I'm sure you can easily get one if you have a Visa, but for some
reason we never thought it out that far.

Those same cards that were declined tested satisfactory for a ~20USD at a
Starbucks the same day. I tried a 40USD gift card purchase right after that
and was declined. Our native friend covered me.

tl;dr first stop when visiting China should be a bank. you'll get an account,
which will give you a card, which you can use for China's increasingly
required digital payment systems

------
PavlovsCat
"Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims"

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/ch...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-
xinjiang-documents.html) /
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552873)

Welcome to HN, where that can get 40 points and yet not be found among the
first hundreds of stories. Poof, gone like that, but not even a [flagged] tag.
At this point, there's even CCP officials who are less committed than HN is:
They leak stuff, you can't even discuss it.

[https://twitter.com/austinramzy/status/1195688077731061760](https://twitter.com/austinramzy/status/1195688077731061760)

> _The material was brought to light by a member of the Chinese political
> establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that the disclosure
> would prevent party leaders, including Xi Jinping, from escaping culpability
> for the mass detentions. There are nearly 200 pages of speeches by Xi
> Jinping, XJ party secretary Chen Quanguo and security boss Zhu Hailun.
> There’s another 150+ pages of directives and orders on controlling the
> Muslim population. I’ve reported on China since 2003, and can’t recall a
> leak like this._

> _It is stunning to hear party leaders in their own words ordering a drastic
> crackdown on extremism, including mass detentions, and the cold calculations
> with which they weigh the consequences. Chen redistributes Xi’s speeches
> after he goes to Xinjiang in 2016, and calls for a “smashing, obliterating
> offensive” and issues a vague order to “round up everyone who should be
> rounded up”. But perhaps the most telling document is a guide for officials
> to explain the camps to children of detainees. It is full of veiled threats,
> pseudomedical language of psychological infection and assurances the party
> will take care of you._

~~~
aesterits
Fascinating article, thanks for posting!

I didn’t realize this all started because of terrorist attacks,

> _In 2014, little more than a year after becoming president, he spent four
> days in the region, and on the last day of the trip, two Uighur militants
> staged a suicide bombing outside a train station in Urumqi that injured
> nearly 80 people, one fatally._

> _Weeks earlier, militants with knives had gone on a rampage at another
> railway station, in southwest China, killing 31 people and injuring more
> than 140. And less than a month after Mr. Xi’s visit, assailants tossed
> explosives into a vegetable market in Urumqi, wounding 94 people and killing
> at least 39._

> _Against this backdrop of bloodshed, Mr. Xi delivered a series of secret
> speeches setting the hard-line course that culminated in the security
> offensive now underway in Xinjiang. While state media have alluded to these
> speeches, none were made public._

Xi’s speech was enlightening too,

> _In several surprising passages, given the crackdown that followed, Mr. Xi
> also told officials to not discriminate against Uighurs and to respect their
> right to worship. He warned against overreacting to natural friction between
> Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, and rejected
> proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China._

> _“In light of separatist and terrorist forces under the banner of Islam,
> some people have argued that Islam should be restricted or even eradicated,”
> he said during the Beijing conference. He called that view “biased, even
> wrong.” “We say that development is the top priority and the basis for
> achieving lasting security, and that’s right,” Mr. Xi said. “But it would be
> wrong to believe that with development every problem solves itself.”_

> _“In recent years, Xinjiang has grown very quickly and the standard of
> living has consistently risen, but even so ethnic separatism and terrorist
> violence have still been on the rise,” he said. “This goes to show that
> economic development does not automatically bring lasting order and
> security.”_

Great article, this gives me a much better picture of what’s happening and how
it started.

------
xerox13ster
It's going to be really difficult for foreigners when they ditch money
entirely for their social credit system.

------
zozbot234
Finally a meaningful use for bitcoin

~~~
Zak
If vendors won't take cash even though it's illegal to refuse it, they're
probably not going to take Bitcoin. These mobile payment systems seem to be
popular there because they're convenient for locals.

