I go to China often but it's been two years now. I don't look forward to the next visit for this very reason—I'll need this to pay for any and everything. I'm not going back.
I was there last month and it was almost impossible to get money on your WeChat account without a Chinese bank account. It was easy to fund my Malaysian WeChat account but the balance isn't transferable or usable in China.
There's currently one remaining loop hole I know about which is to pay someone to send money via a red envelope / hóngbāo but it's getting increasingly harder. It's already asking you for a passport and right now it still works even if you cancel that but probably not for much longer. You can do that either if you know someone, ask someone in a store if they do it from their personal account or through some websites that take PayPal but with a hefty commission usually.
It's a relatively new change, the latest big change was in April when they removed one other way of sending a red envelope. So it doesn't seem like it's intentional.
I don’t have any numbers on that but it seems that external tourism isn’t a big priority for China. If it were they’d make sure that the Visa process is easier, at least the people at airport information counters speak English and other small things that tourists would encounter right away. This is just anecdotal but most tourists I saw were Chinese so maybe the percentage of non-Chinese tourists isn’t that high.
Besides payments, WeChat is inextricably tied to everything you do in China from chatting with your friends to buying a movie ticket to visa renewals. I've spent over 400 nights in Chinese cities and I depend on WeChat like I depend on water.
There are other apps. And you can still buy tickets from counter in cinema use Cash or WeChat or Alipay. People use it more often because of its convenience. But you can live without it. The main problem is that you will find it difficult to live without its convenience.
And how long, if not already - likely once their people are acclimatized to the idea of 'social rating' system - before they start subtly or aggressively warning people, swaying their behaviour, of potential for their rating to go down if associating with X who isn't using apps.
A digitized version of Nazi Germany with mass censorship capabilities really is terrifying.
I was curious about what happens to people who can't get WeChat accounts. Perhaps due to committing crimes (in the way that sex offenders may be banned from using social media) or maybe they offended WeChat in some way (in the way that people lose their Google accounts if Google so decides).
Perhaps you could even be kicked off WeChat for having a social rating that was too low.
Out of curiosity do you change your behaviour because of your credit score (created by private companies)?
Considering the fact that the private companies pitching social credit to the government are merchants (Tecent & Aligroup) that is the only data they have access to.
Companies spend money on advertising because it works.
Edit: Realized after you asked about credit score. A credit score is quite different than what China's rating system is all about from my understanding. Being dependable on repaying money or paying money you've promised to pay is a very specific rating that aligns with a person's accountability and/or ability to predict and manage their situation.
There is a TV series based on Ian Kershaw's work on Nazi Germany [1]. One Gestapo office had not been able to destroy their records and it was found that most arrests of people were done as a result of them being denounced by their neighbours not by any actions of Gestapo personnel.
I’m not surprised. Many totalitarian regimes set up systems where neighbors can report on “counterrevolutionary” activities in which an abusive system “gets abused” and people use it for personal revenge among other things.
I was in China (Beijing and Wenzhou) in April. I had NO success finding a taxi in Beijing—the only way to get a ride was to use an app like Didi Chuxing.
I was able to install and use it just fine. The problem was that it is impossible to link a non-PRC payment method to it. The same is true for WeChat Pay or Alipay—you've got to use a Chinese bank account or card as a source. I was not able to find a way around this despite over an hour of experimenting with the apps.
In contrast, it was easy to get taxis in Wenzhou. The drivers all initially asked for electronic payment, though, so it's probably only a matter of regulation that is preventing them from going cashless.
You can link a foreign VISA card to Didi and pay with that easily. I did this in April this year. Actually it was the only thing I was able to pay for without cash while in China.
I was able to book via Didi using my Singapore Card.
But then again I had a different problem because the Didi drivers will call up to confirm the booking and pickup location and I had to get help of my friends/colleagues to help me communicate with the driver.
If you want to get a real taxi use Baidu maps. It is in Chinese but you can just drop a pin where you want to go and ask for a real taxi instead of a Didi.
A Chinese person can show you the buttons to press then you can pay with cash.
I'm pretty sure I tried this—I think the prompts were even in English, if I'm remembering correctly. However, I gave up after several tries of it looking for a taxi and not finding one while I was standing in the rain on a dark street corner. It would sit and look for minutes and appeared to be a broken feature.
I ended up taking a BRT line to get back to my hotel and it was great. All of my experiences with transit in Beijing were excellent. I just wish taxis or car services were an option for tourists.
For WeChat pay, you can always directly exchange RMB for USD (say with venmo). There's websites to facilitate this if you don't have a Chinese contact.
There are shops in the big cities that are starting to refuse cash now (apparently, this is not illegal in China) and only accept the two big payment apps.
My understanding from folks who do business in China is that the laws on the books are one thing.... what you can count on legally is often entirety different.
China doesn't actually have a lot of police. It looks like it does but a lot of them are teenagers doing there year of service with no real power or authority.
Enforcement of basically all laws is done using some rotation system. This month it will be X, next month it will be Y. One of the interesting things is that they don't keep it a secret. It isn't published in newspapers but every Chinese person seems to know what the police are targeting now and next month. It gives everyone time to clean up their act before they get in trouble. The enforcement can never be 100%
If people complain enough then it will be resolved quickly. The shops around tourist areas should be fixed quickly because it looks bad.
At least last time I was there, you needed a Chinese bank account to link. A quick search suggests there are a few workarounds but you probably still can't just add a foreign credit card.
