A random payment provider can’t use NFC on the iPhone, but they can use the camera. So here we are. QR payments are super popular all over Asia (and yes they suck, but you can blame Apple)
What would NFC add that you can't do with a QR code?
(Use of a QR code doesn't preclude paying in the normal way by calling over a server and using a contactless payment terminal. It just gives you the option to skip that and pay directly from your device.)
But I'll bite.
Somehow I always end up defending China on HN but really I'm just sharing what I have seen/heard during my time there.
The majority of the Chinese do not worry about those things.
The great firewall is probably the greatest inconvenience you listed. However, the Chinese that come here and see FB and Google say, hey, maybe the firewall is not a bad idea. It's easy to circumvent anyway. It just blocks the majority of the population from western media.
The social credit system I don't know anything about, sorry.
The camps, AFAIK, are for Uyghurs classified as dangerous or high risk. At least, that's what the Han believe. The general understanding is if you do something like text "terrorism" as a Uyghur - you disappear for a while. I think part of this is because they are terrified the US will radicalize the muslim extremists. The truth is we barely have to - they hate the Chinese enough there are recorded events of the Uyghers just running around killing Han Chinese with knives. This was before cameras were super popular, but there is potato footage. This is partly why large cities in Xinjiang have such high security (think officers with MP5s outside every K-6 school) So, the Han do not protest at such camps.
Picture yourself being jailed, taken away from your family, forced to learn another language and change your customs because “people who look like you can be dangerous”.
China has valid reasons to be concerned about such methods given explicit admissions from the US government at the highest levels, that they are considered an enemy.
I'm in Thailand right now. The US is attempting to destabilize Thailand with the coming elections in order to break its strong ties to China, ties that are quite reasonable and rational given the cultural and economic ties between the countries. The Americans are seeking to get rid of the Thai monarchy, which the average Thai is not particularly interested in doing.
I have a quite sobering article for you, which has a very different take on the Chinese propaganda.
"Macron is an asshole"
Without thinking it will affect my life in any way.
So at this point, I'll just assume you are a troll and ignore you.
I think that, in terms of insulting the leader... most Chinese are pretty happy with Xi? But yeah, totalitarian regime, insulting leader, bad idea.
Even in the US your kids are not likely to get shot unless they're involved with youth drug gangs, that's where most of the child gun deaths come from. In France they trade the mass shooting incidents in for truck or bomb attacks.
Propaganda and brainwashing is probably a worse risk than that.
Buying things is a benign thing of your day to day life. Scanning your face to pay is a wet dream for surveillance states.
All the shops (except Starbucks) are operated by a single company: OTG. They are absolutely swimming in the monopoly dividend. There are several such airports in USA.
Blocking unbanked people from the economy is sorta bad if you have any kind of homeless population.
If you ate, and tried to give the restaurant $50 cash to cover the bill, what's the restaurant going to do? Call the cops? The cops will just tell the owner to take the cash or forget about it.
> In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.
Magnificent book.