by H. L. Bentley


BEIJING Sean Taylor Hat , Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- During a conversation recently, afriend of mine was waxing lyrical about contactless cards in theUK.


"All I have to do is tap my card on the reader and I can pay formy shopping!" she told me.


"Oh," I said. "You still use cards?!"


China is edging its way toward being a cashless society. I havetravelled across the country, and from city to village, cash is nolonger king. It is becoming increasingly more common place to useone of the various payment apps you can install on your phone.


It's fine not to not carry cash in China, but you do need a dataplan.


The two market leaders for mobile payment in China are Alipayand Wechat Wallet. In the first quarter of 2017, Chinese commercialbanks dealt with 9.3 billion payments made on mobile devices. Infact, Chinese mobile payment apps are going global as more Chinesetravel abroad and other countries look to offer the Chinese modelfor customers.


Alibaba's e-payment arm, Alipay, can settle 18 varieties ofcurrencies in more than 200 countries and regions, thanks toagreements with 40 million overseas merchants that acceptsettlements through the digital wallet.


Wechat, too, is gaining popularity around the world. In additionto China, WeChat Pay covers more than 130,000 overseas businessesin 13 countries and regions, supporting settlements in 10currencies, including the British pound, Hong Kong dollar, U.S.dollar, Japanese yen and Canadian dollar.


Both AliPay and Wechat are pushing for the full adoption ofdigital payments. To this end, in August they will both run"cashless" marketing promotions. Alipay's promotion is based on itsprojection that China is a mere 1,698 days away from being acashless society. While it is difficult to find the basis for thisforecast, it does show that both businesses envisage a future wheredigital payment will be the norm.


Digital wallets are just one modern innovation reshaping the waypeople live in China. With 10 million shared bikes, nearly 2,600high-speed trains and 15,000 new enterprises registered each day,there is no denying that China is speeding into the future.


In today's China, senior citizens use smart phones to buyvegetables at the market. Office workers ride to work on sharedbikes, and young lovers buy cinema tickets on the very samemessaging apps they use to text each other sweet nothings. Evenresidents of rural areas are becoming more technologically savvy,using online payment services or marketplaces to buy and sellproducts.


Transport, too, is being reshaped by digital innovation. Case inpoint: shared bicycles.


China has over 30 shared bike companies. While the idea itselfis not new, it took a Chinese firm to perfect the model. Using GPSand QR codes, Chinese firms created an accessible and affordablebike sharing system. Two of the market leaders, Mobike and Ofo,have already ridden into foreign markets.


Mobike's distinctive orange bikes can be seen on the streets ofManchester, Singapore, Florence and Milan.


Ofo is already operating in the United States, Britain,Singapore and Kazakhstan.


Since parking its yellow bikes across Singapore in February, Ofohas already gained 100,000 users in the city-state, and its bikesare used 20,000 times a day.


While the UK invented the locomotive, China is driving the trainthis century. It had 2,595 high-speed trains in operation by theend of 2016 -- 60 percent the world's total high-speed trains.


As of the end of 2016, China had more than 20,000 kilometers ofhigh-speed rail lines. It aims to add another 10,000 km by 2020 andsurpass 45,000 km by 2030.


China is working on next-generation bullet trains with a maximumspeed of 400 km per hour. They will be ready by 2020 for marketslinked to the Belt and Road Initiative. A train recently leftBeijing for Xuzhou Zhengzhou in east China' s Jiangsu HenanProvince with a top speed of 350 km per hour.