6 ways Chinese technology is ahead of the rest of the world

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• 6 ways Chinese technology is ahead of the rest of the world

Your smartphone comes from China, a country where it is common to "trade by phone" through a messaging app. It is home to Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Xaomi, and is home to massive investments in AI, 5G, autonomous cars, robotics, electric vehicles, and even missions to Mars. . Here are some ways that an increasingly high-tech China is ahead of the rest of the world.

The WeChat super app is ubiquitous in everyday life in China (Image credit: WeChat)

1. A "super-application"

China has 1.4 billion people. About 1.100 billion of them use WeChat. Take this for a moment. Globally, Facebook has 2,4 billion users. WhatsApp has 300 million. In China, WeChat (called Wēixìn in Mandarin, which translates to ``micro-messaging'')—essentially a messaging service owned by tech giant (and the world's fifth-largest company) Tencent—is the way that people interact...everything and everyone. In addition to social media, WeChat works as a mobile payment app, with all retailers, including buses and subways in China, scanning a QR code in the app to make transactions. It can be used to book flights and hotels just as easily as buying food from a supermarket or even a street vendor. WeChat balance is now the main way to pay and receive money in China. Who needs banks? It has a rival, Alipaba's Alipay, but with 79% market penetration in China, WeChat has been called China's "digital life force," but its desire to catch on in China has failed global scale nonetheless. . It seems destined to only be the fifth most used app in the world, after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger... but it's ahead of everything that's possible.

China's new Fuxing high-speed rail between Shanghai and Beijing (image credit: Axalta) China is moving fast. We've all heard stories of the speed of its construction companies, including the 2015 construction of a 57-story skyscraper in 19 business days. But the other mega-tech projects in China stand out. Take their high-speed trains. Japan is still considered by many to be the seat of high-speed rail with its famous Shinkansen, but in the last 15 years China Railway High-speed (CRH) has built a much more extensive network and manufactures its own trains. high speed Fuxing class. . Now the longest high-speed rail network in the world, Chinese high-speed trains cover between 155 and 217 mph. Touch down at Shanghai Pudong Airport and you can even get a taste of the future of ultrafast rail on the Shanghai Maglev, a magnetic levitation train that reaches a top speed of 267mph. China has plenty of other mega-tech projects. There's the Three Gorges Dam, a gravity hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River and supplies the world's largest power station. The Aizhai Suspension Bridge, the world's tallest and longest suspension bridge, and the striking 16-mile Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge land on two man-made islands on its way. And don't forget the Shanghai Tower, the world's second-tallest building at 2073 feet, and the Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world's largest single-dish radio telescope for astronomy. In addition, the China Belt and Road initiative plans to invest €6 billion in major construction projects, such as highways, ports and airports, in neighboring countries.

(Image credit: Huawei)

3. 5G and AI networks

How does 5G work so far? After a wave of publicity in 2019 surrounding various network launches, the unrest has died down. Because? 5G doesn't really exist in the UK and US outside of city centres, that's why. Cue China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, which presented their plans to provide broadband connectivity. Unsurprisingly, China gets one of the largest 5G rollouts in the world. 5G is already available in 50 cities in China and 130,000 5G base stations are about to go into service. In addition, China is also home to two-thirds of the world's investment in artificial intelligence (AI), which recently replaced the United States. When it comes to advanced technology, everything revolves around China.

The bikes use Bluetooth and geofencing (Image credit: Wikimedia)

4. Sharing bikes without a dock

Thousands of cities around the world now have bike sharing programs. You get the app, you sign up, you get a bike on a rack, you use it, and you flip it. Easy. So why is China taking a more technological path? The latest fad is to rent bikes without a dock, which eliminates the need for a physical central hub and instead uses virtual mapping, Bluetooth geofencing, and GPS to keep track of where they are. located. Mobike in Shanghai, which has about 1,5 million bikes without a docking station, has an app that tells cyclists where they can and can't park their bikes when they're done with them. If they are left in random places, an alarm sounds on the bike and they receive an SMS warning. The spread of 5G will only help diets like this.

The BYD Tang was the best-selling rechargeable electric car in China in 2016 (Image credit: Wikimedia)

5. Electric vehicles.

Nobody says that China is an ecological country. It has a bad reputation for pollution and uses half of the world's concrete. However, it is already the world's largest market for battery-powered cars, being the largest manufacturer and buyer of electric vehicles. It makes almost all the electric buses in the world. In short, the electric vehicle revolution is already underway and China owns it. Your first electric car? It's probably from China.

China has sent missions to land on the moon and has planned more (Image credit: CNSA)

6. Ambitious space program

China now launches more rockets each year than any other country, and while routinely scorned by the Western media, China's National Space Administration (CNSA), China's NASA, is definitely stepping up. It doesn't have NASA's budget, but in 2019, it landed a spacecraft and lunar rover on the far side of the moon, with mind-blowing scientific return. Even NASA can't do this. If all goes according to plan in 2020, the CNSA will launch its Chang'e-5 mission to collect lunar rocks for relaunch on Earth. Then it will launch a new space station. Finally, it will send its Huoxing mission to Mars. Also, this is all done with massive space rockets designed and built only in China. Further proof, if necessary, that in technology, China is ahead of much of the world.