At the turn of the century, the Chinatown in Philadelphia, the United States, will hold lion, street patrol, food exhibition and other celebrations during the festival, living in the vicinity of a young boy named Paul Mike (Paul Mike), was attracted by the colorful scene in front of him, since then deeply in love with Eastern culture. Paul later taught himself Chinese, and after graduation came to Shanghai to work, in the blink of an eye, it was already seven years.
In 2024, Paul took his sister on a tour of China and was shocked by the prosperity and wealth in front of him. He simply gave a Chinese name “Baobao Bear” and became a travel blogger. At each place, he asked each other in a mixture of Chinese and English sentences: Sister, is the City not City?
The original meaning of “City” refers to the city, which extends the meaning of fashion and foreign style. In response, the sister turns her back on a modern building, or a bustling crowd, and opens her mouth wide and says, “Wow! What a City.”
Time flies, the face of China shown to the world has long been more than just a stereotype of lion dancing and dumplings, and it has issued a surprise to modern and modern China, becoming the current “traffic password” of international social media. As China gradually opens its 72/144-hour visa-free transit policy, foreigners have started a craze of “China Travel”. They travel and consume in China, unlock diversified gameplay, and are infected by the pluralistic, three-dimensional and inclusive real China, and “City not City” has become a popular word in 2024.
Prosperity, safety and convenience are the common feelings that China has left to foreign tourists after the expansion of the transit visa-free policy. What foreign tourists may not realize is that behind the seamless consumption experience is transnational coordination and multi-sectoral collaboration under the huge difference in payment habits at home and abroad. Just as “it is good to enjoy the cool under the big trees”, foreign tourists can “silkily” integrate into “China Travel”, which is inseparable from the financial service system in “carrying forward”.
Travel in China, “both City and Country”
Bao Bao Xiong has become an international social media sensation thanks to sharing stories about his trip to China. He travels through the streets of Shanghai, his home City, to record and share daily life and what he sees and hears in the form of “City Walk”. His footsteps not only stopped in Shanghai, but also set foot on the capital of China, standing on the top of the majestic Great Wall, feeling the thick history and the grandeur of nature. The sea breeze of Qingdao beach, the free and vast grassland of Inner Mongolia and the food jungle of Changsha all record his love and exploration of China’s diverse culture.
With both modern cities and idyllic scenery, he showed the world an open and inclusive China full of diverse charm through his personal experience.
Convenient transportation, prices of ordinary people, rich food, splendid culture, and safe environment, these common things of Chinese people have become a happy land in the eyes of foreigners. As a result, “China Travel” has become a popular search term on overseas social media.
In the media reports, an American couple came to Beijing for the first time, accidentally left the item on the seat, returned the original way to look for it, and unexpectedly returned it. A foreign woman was shopping in a street shop in Guangzhou, and because of poor language communication, she directly asked the shopkeeper to enter the amount of goods and pay for them. “Only in China can there be such trust.” “She said.
Behind these trust is the security of the system built by a solid economic level, a prosperous market, and convenient infrastructure. It is in this context that we have seen the vigorous development of China’s financial payment sector. Taking the data of the Payment and Settlement Department of the People’s Bank of China as an example, by the end of 2023, China’s existing credit cards have reached 767 million.
The popularity of credit cards is inseparable from the increasingly sound social trust system. It is because of confidence in the stability and reliability of the financial system that people are willing to use credit cards for credit consumption. From the first to 767 million, in this “credit era”, every real individual consumption is like a trickle and gathers into a torrent to activate the vitality of modern economy and society.
This huge data, in fact, with a rich variety of goods, convenient and efficient services and mature financial networks mutually complement each other. When a strong financial infrastructure is built and improved in a large economy, the complex problem of financial payments is reduced to a multiple choice problem that can be solved through concerted efforts.
Therefore, when The State Council issued the “Opinions on Further Optimizing Payment Services and Improving the Convenience of Payment”, which mentioned that because the elderly and other groups in China prefer to use cash, some foreign nationals in China are used to bank cards or cash payment, and are not used to mobile payment, and the inclusiveness of payment services needs to be improved, China UnionPay responded quickly. At the same time, “Splendid Operation 2024” was launched.
This action provides foreign friends with multiple payment tools including “card, code, Pay” and bank card cash withdrawal, etc., and also has special concessions for the domestic pan-population, including the elderly, providing a landing fulcrum for foreign nationals in China and the elderly to share the dividend of the digital era.
China’s financial services, just like the Chinese culture shown by “China Travel”, can be both City and Country, both “tall” and “grounded”.
With the continuous progress of technology and the continuous innovation of the financial market, credit cards are more convenient, efficient and secure, and as an important part of the many choices of Chinese and foreign consumers, they bear witness to China’s diversity and inclusiveness.
