中国数字化消费何以领先世界

China’s consumers are by no means the wealthiest in the world. But they are years ahead of their counterparts in many developed economies in terms of how they shop and pay for what they buy. In this, they are revolutionising the way consumer finance is conducted in the world’s second-biggest economy.

中国消费者无论如何也算不上全世界最富有的群体。但在如何购物和如何支付方面，他们比很多发达国家的消费者超前很多年。在这方面，他们正在彻底改变消费金融在中国这个世界第二大经济体的操作方式。

Like so many of the changes sweeping China, the uptake of internet and digital technologies has happened with head-spinning speed.

像很多席卷中国的变化一样，互联网和数字化技术以令人头晕目眩的速度迅速兴起。

As recently as 2000, a mere 1.7 per cent of mainland Chinese were online. Now, the country has more than 700m internet users – a penetration rate of more than 50 per cent.

就在2000年，中国内地还仅有1.7%的人上网。如今，中国有超过7亿互联网用户——网络普及率超过50%。

Visit any Chinese city these days, and you will find pretty much everyone toting a smartphone or tablet – or both. China’s e-commerce sales have soared from practically zero in 2003 to nearly $600bn last year, and now top those in the United States. Alibaba’s annual “Singles Day” shopping event generated a massive $17.8bn-worth of sales on its online marketplaces earlier this month, up 32 per cent from a year earlier.

如今到中国任何一座城市，你都会发现差不多每个人都随身携带智能手机或平板电脑——或两者都带着。中国电商销售额从2003年几乎为零的水平飙升至去年的将近6000亿美元，如今已经超过了美国的电商销售额。上月早些时候，阿里巴巴旗下的在线购物平台在一年一度的双十一购物节中创造了178亿美元的庞大销售额，同比增长32%。

Put another way, Chinese mainland’s consumers – like those in many other Asian nations – have gone from (nearly) no-tech to high-tech within just a few years, largely bypassing clunky fixed-line telephony to leap into a world where and online shopping smartphone ownership have become the norm.

换句话说，短短几年间，中国内地消费者——和其他很多亚洲国家的消费者一样——从（近乎）无科技跨越到了高科技，基本上跳过了笨重的固定电话时代，一跃进入了在线购物和拥有智能手机成为常态的世界。

This transformation is explained by a powerful combination of factors.

这种转变可以通过几种因素的共同作用来解释。

First, Chinese mainland’s retail and telecommunications networks – again, like those in other developing economies – were for decades underdeveloped and inconvenient. So China’s consumers eagerly embraced the speed and choice that the internet and mobile phones brought to buying clothes, hotel stays or movie tickets, and swapping shopping tips with their friends.

首先，过去几十年，中国内地零售和电信网——也像其他发展中经济体一样——不发达也不方便。因此中国消费者迅速接受了互联网和移动电话为在线购买衣服、预订酒店或购买电影票、以及与朋友分享购物窍门带来的快捷和丰富的选择。

By now, a generation of Chinese has grown up with a different concept of “convenience”: Residents of, say, Shenzhen or Guangzhou are perfectly likely to buy items via the smartphone in their pocket, rather than walk one block to the store that stocks them.

如今，一代中国人已经带着对“方便”的不同理解成长起来：比如说，深圳或广州的居民完全有可能通过装在兜里的智能手机来购买商品，而无需穿过一个街区去商店购买。

This is the world that anyone doing business in China needs to adapt to: an e-commerce environment that is one of the most developed in the world, and that is growing rapidly. Research company eMarketer estimates that China e-commerce sales will hit nearly $900bn this year – nearly half the global total – and more than $2.4tn by 2020. Already, 55.5 per cent of that is done via mobile devices; by 2020, that will have risen to 68 per cent, according to eMarketer.

所有想在中国做生意的人都需要适应这个世界最发达并且仍然在迅速发展的电商环境。研究公司eMarketer预计，今年中国电商销售额将达到近9000亿美元——差不多是全球电商销售总额的一半——到2020年将超过2.4万亿美元。据eMarketer的数据，其中已经有55.5%的销售额是通过移动设备完成；到2020年，这一比例将升至68%。

Meanwhile, the mainland authorities want to continue to develop the Chinese economy, and have supported the build-out of internet-related technologies.

与此同时，希望继续发展中国经济的中国内地当局一直支持发展与互联网相关的技术。

China’s internet and mobile revolution is perhaps most visible in the increasingly affluent and vibrant Pearl River Delta, which is home to high-tech corporate giants like Huawei Technologies and Tencent. Internet penetration in Guangdong province, where the Delta is located, is well above the national average. For example: there are 78m internet users in Guangdong, nearly three-quarters of the population.

中国的互联网和移动革命或许在日益富裕和充满活力的珠三角最为明显，这里是华为(Huawei Technologies)和腾讯(Tencent)等高科技巨头的大本营。广东省（珠三角所在地）的互联网普及率远远超过全国平均水平。例如：广东省有7800万互联网用户，占到该省总人口的近四分之三。

All this has massive implications for the financial and e-commerce sectors in China, which have raced to adapt to Chinese consumers’ ravenous appetite for digital innovation.

这一切对于中国的金融和电商行业意义重大；这两个行业一直快速发展，以适应中国消费者对数字创新的贪婪胃口。

Just as buying behaviour has changed from traditional over-the-counter to online/mobile, so too financial interaction is rapidly becoming paperless, wired and digital.

就在购买行为从传统的柜台交易变为线上或移动交易之际，财务互动也迅速变得无纸化、网络化和数字化。

Alibaba, for instance, has capitalised on the popularity of its own online marketplaces by creating its own payment system, Alipay. In 2017, Alipay had 451m active users conducting on average 153m transactions per day. By comparison, PayPal’s 180m active users conducted just 16 million transactions a day.

例如，阿里巴巴通过建立自己的支付系统“支付宝”(Alipay)来利用其在线市场的高人气。2017年，支付宝拥有4.51亿活跃用户，每天平均完成1.53亿笔交易。相比之下，Paypal只有1.8亿活跃客户，平均每天仅完成1600万笔交易。

And Tencent in 2017 set up an electronic wallet – which allows people-to-people payments via mobile phones – for users of its massively popular social messaging apps.

2017年，腾讯为其人气极高的社交消息传送应用开通了电子钱包功能，允许用户通过手机实现相互支付。

The uptake of such technologies has been immense.

这类科技一直普及迅速。

Within just 72 hours of ApplePay’s launch in Chinese mainland in February, 3m payment cards had been registered to the service. That’s three times the total registered in the US.

今年2月，ApplePay登陆中国内地的72小时内，就有300万张支付卡绑定了该服务。这是美国绑定量的3倍。

More than 410m Chinese now regularly use e-payment methods – nearly 90 per cent of them via mobile devices – according to official data.

根据官方数据显示，如今超过4.1亿中国人定期使用电子支付方式，其中近90%的人是通过移动设备实现电子支付的。

Traditional banks also are responding to China’s e-commerce/e-payment ecosystem, and are rushing to introduce new digital tools for their customers.

传统银行业也在对中国电子商务及电子支付的生态系统作出反应，竞相对客户推出新的数字化工具。

Virtual teller machines, for example, allow customers to interact with bank staff by video, scan documents and provide e-signatures, meaning that things like opening an account becomes simpler and quicker.

例如，虚拟柜员机允许客户通过视频与银行员工互动、扫描文件并提供电子签名，这意味着开户等业务变得更加简单快捷。

Mobile apps are increasingly common and making it easier for customers to check their accounts or make transactions, wherever they happen to be.

手机应用日益普及，使顾客更容易随时随地进行账户查询或交易。

Thumbprint ID and voice-recognition technologies are already available and will before long be commonplace, adding an extra layer of security and convenience for online and mobile customers.

指纹识别和声音识别技术已经出现，要不了多久就会普及，为在线和手机客户提供额外的安全和便捷。

“Bricks and mortar” bank branches and people-to-people interaction is still highly valued, although their role is rapidly changing to focus on meeting customers’ wealth management and more complex needs. Paperless, branch-less “clicks and apps” banking allows banks to service most of their customers’ transactional needsmore efficiently and quickly, around the clock – whether they are in Shenzhen, Shanghai, rural Sichuan, or on holiday in Thailand.

“实体”银行网点和人与人面对面的互动仍然受到高度重视，尽管它们的角色正迅速变为专注于满足客户对财富管理和较复杂业务的需求。无纸化、不用去柜台的“点击应用”服务，使得银行可以24小时更高效、更快捷地服务于大多数客户的交易需求，无论他们是身处深圳、上海、四川农村，还是正在泰国度假。

Few people could have imagined the changes sweeping China’s retail and banking scene just five years ago. The next five years are sure to bring still more change. Banks and retailers will need to be nimble, and anticipate the future needs and preferences of China’s 1.37bn shoppers. Those who get it right will find the size of the prize is immense.

就在五年前，还几乎无人可以想象如今席卷中国零售和银行业的变革。接下来的五年必然还会带来更多变革。银行和零售商要灵活应变，提前预测13.7亿中国购物者的未来需求和偏好。那些预测正确的人会发现，奖励是丰厚的。