China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech
原文：
HONG KONG — Snapchat and Kik, the messaging services, use bar codes that look like drunken checkerboards to connect people and share information with a snap of their smartphone cameras. Facebook is working on adding the ability to hail rides and make payments within its Messenger app. Facebook and Twitter have begun live-streaming video.
All of these developments have something in common: The technology was first popularized in China.
WeChat and Alipay, two Chinese apps, have long used the bar-codelike symbols — called QR codes — to let people pay for purchases and transfer money. Both let users hail a taxi or order a pizza without switching to another app. The video-streaming service YY.com has for years made online stars of young Chinese people posing, chatting and singing in front of video cameras at home.
Silicon Valley has long been the world’s tech capital: It birthed social networking and iPhones and spread those tech products across the globe. The rap on China has been that it always followed in the Valley’s footsteps as government censorship abetted the rise of local versions of Google, YouTube and Twitter.
But China’s tech industry — particularly its mobile businesses — has in some ways pulled ahead of the United States. Some Western tech companies, even the behemoths, are turning to Chinese firms for ideas.
“We just see China as further ahead,” said Ted Livingston, the founder of Kik, which is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario.
China’s largest internet companies are the only ones in the world that rival America’s in scale. The purchase this week of Uber China by Didi Chuxing after a protracted competition shows that at least domestically, Chinese players can take on the most sophisticated and largest start-ups coming out of America.
The future of online payments and engagements can be found at Liu Zheng’s noodle shop in central Beijing. Liu Xiu’e, 60, and her neighbor, Zhang Lixin, 55, read about the noodle shop on WeChat. Then they ordered and paid for their lunches and took and posted selfies of themselves outside the restaurant, all using the same app.
Liu Zheng, who is not related to Liu Xiu’e, said the automated ordering and payments meant he could cut down on wages for waiters. “In the future, we will only need one waiter to help in the restaurant and one to help with seating,” Mr. Liu said.
Industry leaders point to a number of areas where China jumped first. Before the online dating app Tinder, people in China used an app called Momo to flirt with nearby singles. Before the Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos discussed using drones to deliver products, Chinese media reported that a local delivery company, S.F. Express, was experimenting with the idea. WeChat offered speedier in-app news articles long before Facebook, developed a walkie-talkie function before WhatsApp, and made major use of QR codes well before Snapchat.
Before Venmo became the app for millennials to transfer money in the United States, both young and old in China were investing, reimbursing each other, paying bills,and buying products from stores with smartphone-based digital wallets.
“Quite frankly, the trope that China copies the U.S. hasn’t been true for years, and in mobile it’s the opposite: The U.S. often copies China,” said Ben Thompson, the founder of the tech research firm Stratechery. “For the Facebook Messenger app, for example, the best way to understand their road map is to look at WeChat.”
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment. Tencent did not respond to requests for comment.
Executives from companies like Facebook and smaller rivals like Kik are trying to replicate what has emerged in China: dominant online platforms where users will spend much of their time. Much of that effort is focused on chat.
“The cool thing about chat is it becomes an operating system for your daily life,” Mr. Livingston said. “Going up to a vending machine, ordering food, getting a cab: Chat can power those interactions, and that’s what we’re seeing with WeChat.”
China still lags in important areas. Its most powerful, high-end servers and supercomputers often rely in part on American technology. Virtual-reality start-ups trail foreign counterparts, and Google has a jump on Baidu in driverless car technology. Many of China’s products also lack the polish of their American counterparts.
The biggest advantage for China’s tech industry, according to many analysts, is that it was able to fill a vacuum after the country essentially created much of its economy from scratch following the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1976. Unlike in the United States, where banks and retailers already have strong holds on customers, China’s state-run lenders are inefficient, and retailers never expanded broadly enough to serve a fast-growing middle class.
Many Chinese also never bought a personal computer, meaning smartphones are the primary — and often first — computing device for the more than 600 million who have them in China.
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纽约时报：终于轮到硅谷抄袭中国了
即时通讯服务Snapchat和Kik，通过让用户使用智能手机的摄像头拍照，使用像喝醉的条码来连接用户和分享信息；Facebook正在Messenger应用中植入约车和支付功能；Facebook与Twitter都已推出了视频直播服务。所有的上述发展有一个共性：这些技术已率先在中国市场获得流行。
微信和支付宝两款应用早已在使用二维码，让用户购买商品和转账。这两款应用也能够在不需要转换到其他应用的情况下，让用户约车或是订购披萨。视频流媒体服务YY多年前早已推出了服务，让网红们坐在家中的视频摄像头前摆弄姿势、聊天和唱歌。
长期以来，硅谷一直是全球的技术之都：它曾是社交网络和iPhone的诞生之地，并让这些科技产品遍及全球，中国此前一直追随着硅谷的足迹。
不过中国的科技产业--尤其是移动业务--在某些方面已经开始领先于美国。一些西方科技公司，甚至是科技巨头，也开始向中国公司取经。Kik创始人泰德·利文斯顿（Ted Livingston）表示，“我们看到中国已取得进一步的领先。”
这一转变意味着中国在全球科技产业的前景方向上将拥有更大的话语权。使用移动设备来支付账单、订购服务、收看视频或是查询日期的中国用户数量比全球任何一个国家都多。中国的移动支付在去年超越了美国。据估计，来自非正式网络银行的P2P贷款业务同样也做到了这一点。
中国的大型互联网公司，是全球目前唯一能同美国竞争对手在规模上匹敌的公司。滴滴出行在本周一宣布收购优步中国，表明至少在中国国内，中国本土公司能够击败来自美国的全球最大、最复杂的初创公司Uber。
在刘征（Liu Zheng，音译）位于北京市区的面馆里，就能够发现未来的在线支付以及参与情况。现年60岁的刘秀（Liu Xiu，音译）和55岁的邻居张立新（Zhang Lixin，音译），通过微信发现了这家面馆。他们通过微信并支付了午餐，并在餐厅外照了一张自拍照。所有的这一切均通过微信应用完成。
面馆老板刘征说，自动下单和支付，意味着他能够减少服务员的工资支出。“我们未来只需要两名服务员，一名帮助客人安排座位，一名给餐厅帮忙，”刘征说。
产业龙头们指出，中国开创了许多新领域。在约会应用Tinder之前，中国用户早已使用陌陌与周围的单身进行聊天。在亚马逊首席执行官杰夫·贝索斯（Jeff Bezos）讨论用无人机运输货物之前，中国媒体就已报道称，中国快递公司顺丰快递就已在试验这一构想。微信在Facebook之前就已提供快速的应用内新闻文章；在WhatsApp之前开发出对讲机功能；并在Snapchat之前开始使用二维码。
在Venmo成为美国千禧一代的转账应用之前，无论是中国的年轻人还是老年人，都已通过基于智能手机的数字钱包转账、支付账单、或是从商店里购买商品。市场调研公司Stratechery创始人本·汤普森（Ben Thompson）说，“坦白的讲，中国抄袭美国的技术早已不是事实。在移动领域这种情况刚好相反：是美国经常在抄袭中国。就拿Facebook Messenger应用来说，想要了解这款应用线路图的最佳方式就是看看微信。”截止目前，Facebook及腾讯发言人均对此报道未予置评。
像Facebook和规模更小的竞争对手Kik等公司的高管们目前都在尝试着复制中国市场出现的局面：占统治地位的在线平台将占据用户更多的时间。这些努力的大多数都集中在聊天上。
“聊天正成为用户日常生活的操作系统，这一点非常酷，”利文斯顿说。“走到自动售货机前，订购食品，约车：聊天能够支持这些互动，这就是我们在微信上看到的景象。”
中国在重要领域依然落后于美国。中国最强大、高端的服务器和超级计算机通常仍部分的依赖于美国的技术。中国的虚拟现实初创公司仍在追随着外国同行们的脚步，而且谷歌在无人驾驶汽车项目上也遥遥领先于百度。许多的中国产品也缺乏像美国同行产品一样的光泽。
与美国银行和零售商早已控制了消费者不同，中国的国有银行效率不高，零售商向外扩张能力不够，无法服务于快速成长的中产阶级。
许多中国消费者甚至还没有购买过PC，这也意味着对于超6亿中国智能手机用户而言，智能手机可能是他们主要、或许也是第一部上网设备。汤普森说，“美国是全球最先推出信用卡的国家，每一位美国人都拥有PC。但是在中国，每个人都在一直使用手机。这等于是中国跨越了PC和信用卡时代，直接在移动商务和移动支付上处于领先。”
中国企业在对待互联网业务也有着不同的做法。美国科技公司强调的是应用的简洁。但是在中国，三大互联网公司--阿里巴巴集团、百度和腾讯--争相在单一应用中植入更多的功能。
在阿里巴巴集团的淘宝购物应用中，用户可以购买日用品，网络游戏的点卡，扫描优惠券并寻找附近零售店的特惠活动。百度的地图应用让用户能够通过Uber约车，预订餐厅或酒店，订购食品，购买电影票或是寻找附近的商店。
腾讯已向其他公司开放了微信，准许他们在微信内开发应用。以上门保养业务切入汽车后市场的e保养，创办业务之初几乎完全依靠着微信来吸引业务。该公司创始人之一高峰说，e保养目前仍依赖于微信，公司50%的支付和20%的新客户仍来自微信。他说，“我们始于微信，因此微信仍然是我们获取客户的主要、原始渠道。”
野村证券预计，通过向服务收取费用以及网络游戏收入，微信已能够通过每名用户每年获得7美元收入。微信目前拥有大约7亿用户，数量超出中国智能手机用户的总和，这部分的源自于部分微信用户身处中国市场之外，或者是拥有多个微信账号。
与美国移动应用的营收主要来自于广告业务不同，微信的营收主要来自于游戏、以及应用中售出的产品和服务。风险投资公司New Enterprise Associates合伙人卡门·常（Carmen Chang） 表示，这些模式可能不能从一个市场直接转移到另一个市场，但市场间可以相互借鉴。“中国有能力开发出大量的创新业务模式。无论硅谷承认与否，这些已经影响到了我们和我们的想法。”（编译/明轩）
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