Today I made another attempt to pay for my room. It is not that I don't have the money, it is just that ECNU doesn't seem to accept any form of payment other than cash. Using a credit card in China is extremely difficult, almost no one takes them. Debit cards aren't much better, only a few places and the ATMs accept visa cards. It is completely normal just to have several thousand US dollars worth of physical Renminbi lying around so you can get to paying for what ever largish purchase you need to make. I heard this steams from the Chinese people's aversion to using credit for anything, as it is seen as spending money you don't have, and the lack of access to credit in China. What is interesting though is that China's mobile banking system is really advanced. The most common convenient payment method are the mobile payment systems like Alipay or WeChat Pay. China's mobile payment systems are actually more advanced the America's and are far more commonly used. Most places, including the ENCU cafeteria and many of the street venders, accept ether Alipay or WeChat Pay. For smaller payments it is actually more common to use a mobile payment system than cash, credit, or debit. Skipping steps on the development ladder is actually very common. The average Chinese had very little capital until Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms in the 1980s, so only really needed little bits of cash to get by. By the time many Chinese had enough money do demand a more convenient payment system, mobile payment was already invented so they must embraced that. We see similar patterns in Africa where, once the population started demanding phones, cellphones were already invented so it just made more sense to build an advanced cell system than a old school land line system.
2 Comments
Sharon
11/28/2016 10:21:08 pm
soo, were you able to make the payment?
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Dad
11/29/2016 01:17:27 am
Maybe you should start using WeChat for payments as well
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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