A glimpse into the future —5 predictions from traveling China
During this year’s National People’s Congress in China (when president Xi Jinping “was allowed to remain president for life”), I spent a week in the central Chinese metropole Wuhan, the little known 12 million inhabitant capital of the province of Hubei.
Since I got some family ties to that region I wanted to find out if Wuhan and surroundings might be a suitable place for (remote) working in the future, how the startup landscape developed and what the latest innovations are (I did similar trips to Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong among others in the past). Investigating the working and living conditions with a “field trip” I stumbled on a couple of Aha experiences I like to share.
Mobile phone is the central hub for everything
One thing that jumped into my face from the first to the last minute of my China stay was that the mobile phone obtains a much more vital role for people’s daily life than in Germany. In China, the mobile phone is the central hub for information, communication, entertainment and money flow.
In accordance, mobile internet (4G) is everywhere, even in metros and on top of the 1.600m high peak of the Wudang Shan mountains (where hikers send live video greetings home to proof their crest, no joke)!
Paying with your phone is the new credit card (or for Germans: the new cash) and multiple mobile payment options are available in each shop. Sometimes, international credit cards (Mastercard and visa) were not accepted at all — probably also due to the comparably little number of foreigners in Wuhan. It impressed me how easily integrated the purchase of a metro ticket is with mobile payment options: imagine an oldschool Windows 98 styled underground ticket machine displaying a QR code, scanned by any mobile phone and tadaa, ticket comes out. Simultaneously in Germany you need the right amounts of coins to pay your bus ticket.
The QR code (especially the Wechat specific “WeCode”) played also a big role as identification for huge post boxes in each compound where your e-commerce (Alibaba, Tmall, TaoBao…) dealer stores your purchase while you’re at work. Same-day delivery is quite normal in China and the problem of the last mile is already solved here.
Interesting to see how speech control has taken over keyboards as the main controller, leading to masses of pedestrians talking, talking, talking with their phones instead of writing, or even watching movies without headphones in trains, metros and shops. The future will be noisy!
Some of the mentioned mobile services are not available for foreigners as their require a Chinese ID or at least a Chinese phone number. But the biggest pain for foreign visitors will be that many of the (US American) apps they use daily are completely censored in China (all Google products like Gmail, Facebook & Whatsapp, Twitter, certain news pages) and now also don’t work anymore with a VPN. The reason of course is that full statal control and censorship is just possible with “mainland-hosted” apps and websites, leading to the nice economic side effect for the local startup ecosystem that Chinese counterparts of “GAFA” (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) could thrive without over-dominant competition (the result: BAT; Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent). I’m curious to see when and how BAT companies are available in Europe to a broad audience.
Clean mobility for millions
While politicians, experts and the media in Germany discuss if e-mobility, car sharing, ridiculously cheep public transportation and correspondent infrastructural investments might be a good idea, we can experience a blueprint of green mobility in China (agreed, green industry is another thing and still far to go, but a change of the official attitude is noticeable).
Gasoline-based scooters, however, are forbidden in several cities, while electric plugs for e-scooters are available everywhere (basically, each café and fruit shop can offer electricity for scooters, making it convenient to drive the whole city). Bike sharing startups have literally exploded in the recent years and free-floating bikes can be found at each corner.
By the way, a single metro tour costs you 0,25 €. More on the metro system follows below.
Blockchain and crypto currencies: meiyou
Sometimes what you don’t see is telling you more about a place than what you do see. In this case: In daily life I could not register any traces of crypto currencies or blockchain-based technologies. I was curious to see how the new technology-loving Chinese are already adapted to that (hype) technology, but both technologies don’t seem to be a big thing in China’s daily life.
I’m sure there are BC/CC enthusiasts in the Chinese startup hubs discussing potentials and working on use cases, but I’m speaking from my visitor’s perspective in Wuhan. With the central government forbidding ICOs and limiting mining and trading activities of a decentral managed currency system, I don’t expect this to change in the future.
Entrepreuneurial spirit China style: no task too big
During my entrepreneurial education project in Shanghai in 2012, we tried to foster founding activities among students as an alternative to the then still preferred jobs in prestigious statal companies or institutions. Six years later I’ve met a total different picture visiting Wuhan’s Optics Valley, a huge technology cluster (actually a satellite city) that started with laser and fiber productions (hence the name) and is now home to investors, incumbents and startups, special trade zone and overcrowded shopping paradise. The internet giant Tencent has a regional headquarter there. In Optics Valley, six startups are founded every day. This video gives you a good overview their activities.
Optics valley was one of the places in Wuhan where you sense the spirit of “everything can be done, no matter how big, difficult or expensive the task”. Another one was the Three Gorges Dam outside of Wuhan, the biggest hydro-electric dam in the world, providing power for 60 mio. households. The constructions were finalized nine months before schedule (on the downside, 1,3 mio. people had to leave their villages to “more modern” housings to make space for the dammed lake, but hey, who wants to stop progress).
The state is watching you — and supporting you
Surely, the state plays an important role in such economic hot spots, attracting certain industries with tax bonuses or public funding (optical technologies in the past, software today). Artificial intelligence for instance was chosen as a key technology for China’s future competitive advantage and hence, is poured over with billions of subsidies. The copycat-image is outdated and a dangerous misbelief of laowais.
Constant progress and improvement in a Chinese metropole also mean that currently ten metro lines (lines, not stations) are under construction and quarters are completely reconstructed every 2 to 3 decades. The old makes space for the new, and nobody complains because “you have to break an egg to make an omelet”. Iterative processes are exemplified by the government and adapted by society!
Protests like for “Stuttgart 21” are unthinkable in China. But as well are project management disasters as for BER airport impossible! The state is watching you so you’re doing your work properly, but furthermost is working effectively like a well-oiled clockwork itself.
Conclusio
Summarizing what I’ve experienced I dare to make the following anticipations about our future:
- Mobile phone or its succeeding technology (implants) will be crucial in our life for communication, information, payment and entertainment converging with the human senses, erasing all other devices as TVs, newspapers, PCs and basically all full-offline experiences.
- The future will be noisy and crowded, making fast and reliable transportation a key competence of a metropole and personal space a luxury. The green mobility revolution is possible.
- Future economies tend to be centrally controlled by governments (China) or business monopolies like GAFA (Europe, USA). Hence, there might be no space for decentralized currencies and databases (although I like to be wrong about that).
- Change-reluctant societies (like ze Germans) have to change their attitude towards innovation or will be rolled-over by the innovators.
- With its pride, speed and “can do spirit” China will play a decisive global role, economically, politically and hence culturally and the rest of the world has to get along with that. Or with Xi Jinping’s words at this years national congress: China is not to stop!
We don’t know much about China (as pointed out here), but I’m sure about one thing: China is closer to the future than we are and we should learn.
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