China’s embrace of all things digital creates a new class of have-nots

With nearly every aspect of life in China migrating to mobile phones, the less tech-savvy or those not inclined to follow digital trends have become a new class of digital have nots – and there could be hundreds of millions of them.

At the age of 62, retired elementary school teacher Wang Yaqing made up her mind to dive into the digital world, something she never considered before. Living in Suzhou, an affluent Chinese city about 100 kilometres north of Shanghai, Wang was wary after hearing reports of consumers being cheated out of large sums of money by scammers taking advantage of digital loopholes and the victim’s ignorance of smartphone technology.

“Making payments on mobile phones looks fancy but it only caters to young people, not to me,” she said.

What changed her mind was the inconvenience of standing in long queues at her local hospital to make bookings and payments because she couldn’t use the automated terminals that were increasingly being installed. Making the experience even worse, elderly people in the long lines at the service counters could only look on as younger Chinese used smartphones to process bookings in less than a minute. 

“I couldn’t bear queuing up at hospitals any more as the limited number of service windows are now overcrowded with elderly people and it takes hours to register and make payments,” Wang said. “I needed to learn from my son how to use smartphones for mobile payments.”