ronChina : "Would you download my app ?"

If you are conscious about your online privacy, you will hardly enjoy China.

User data protection is simply not a thing in China. Data-hungry American tech giants such as Google are dwarfed by Chinese counterparts. While Google, under pressure from advocacy groups and evolving regulations, are becoming more and more transparent and restraint with their data collection, Chinese app developers are still for the most part free to collect a maximum amount of data without any legitimate reason.

Why do I have to download an app just to buy a ticket for a tourist attraction ? And why does it insist on acquiring my exact location before starting ? Why do I need to provide my phone number to search on a map ? It is pointless to ask. It's China.

To collect a maximum amount of data, many Chinese companies insist that you download their mobile apps to use their service. Many Chinese people have smartphones with a ridiculously large storage capacity, like 256GB or 512GB, for a good reason : you need to download an app to do just about anything. While web-based online apps is the default elsewhere, in China, large, bloated, questionnable phone apps with numerous useless functionalities is the expectation for calling a taxing, talking to your friends, or paying with a smartphone.

Because of the long-standing rivalry between monopolistic Chinese tech giants, sometimes you are forced to install multiple apps that do more or less the same thing. Both Alipay and Wechat pay are for paying with your cellphone (contacless bank card payments do not exist in China), and both are bundled in so-called "mega-apps" (a more appropriate name being mega-bloatwares), yet many people have both installed on their cellphones, since numerous merchants only accept one or another. The most famous example is the e-commerce platform Taobao, owned by the same company behind Alipay. It has an absolute dominance in Chinese B2C e-comerce, which means if you want good deals and reasonable delivery, you NEED to pass through them. Surprising for others but not at all for the Chinese, Taobao accepts payments via Alipay only, forcing users to register for Alipay. With many other merchants, especially smaller brick-and-mortar stores, wechat pay is the only accepted non-cash method (No, they don't take bank cards).

The Chinese online eco-system, almost completely cut-off from the global one due to internet censorship, can be more or less summarised in one line : "Would you download my app ? No app. No service. By the way, I am your only choice."

For your convenience, I list below some less invasive Chinese apps.

Map

• Baidu maps
  • Online access
  • Log-in optional