Behind the great firewall, China’s internet is thriving – even in rural areas

Even with more than 772 million internet users, China’s internet penetration of 55.8 per cent among the lowest in G20 countries – but that could be about to change as rural China becomes the next battleground for the online revolution

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A passenger pays for her taxi ride by mobile payment in Shenzhen, southern China. Chinese consumers spend 50 times more on mobile payments than their American counterparts. Photo: May Tse

Published: 9:30am, 3 Feb 2018Updated: 6:06pm, 3 Feb 2018

When farmer Hu Guizhi got her first smartphone last year, she mastered a new skill that would end up saving lots of trips to town: online payments.

“Now I send red packets, shop online, top up my phone, and pay utility bills with just a touch. It couldn’t be more convenient,” said the 55-year-old whose farm is in a small county about 400 kilometres from Zhengzhou city, location of the world’s largest iPhone factory.

The Zhengzhou factory operated by Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple Inc, is capable of producing hundreds of thousands iPhones a day, but in the part of central China’s Henan province where Hu lives, many residents are only just starting to experience the convenience brought about by the mobile internet.

For many rural dwellers like Hu, smartphone-enabled payments have gone beyond novelty, to become ubiquitous methods of paying for goods and services in supermarkets, restaurants, clinics and even street vendors.

By the end of last year about 47 per cent of China’s rural internet users had adopted mobile payments, up from 31.7 per cent a year earlier, according to data published on Wednesday in a biennial report by the government-run China internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC).

Hu is one of the 7.93 million people from rural China, a number bigger than the entire population of Hong Kong, who joined the country’s newest group of internet users last year.

A general view of Henan e-commerce industrial park in Zhengzhou city, Henan province. By the end of last year about 47 per cent of China’s rural internet users had adopted mobile payments. Photo: Simon Song