All over the world, people are addicted to their phones, texting, scrolling and swiping away. But while the rest of the world still pretends that there is life beyond the smartphone, China has long left that stage behind. There, the smartphone is not just a tool: it is life itself.
While Europeans mainly use phones for banking, social media and online shopping, the Chinese use them for everything. This ranges from buying a metro ticket to paying their energy bill and from making a doctor's appointment to paying for barbecued chicken wings on the streets. All with QR codes. Where, in the West, we are still struggling with ten different apps, passwords, etc., in China, all of it goes through WeChat or Alipay. There’s an app for literally everything.
Socially, China has been redesigned. Email is a thing of the past, making a simple phone call has become almost suspicious, and the Chinese version of TikTok is the national pastime. Convenient? Certainly, but also a little scary.
