How easy is it for foreign visitors to use Chinese apps?
At the Shanghai Global Food Trade Show, exhibitors from India Aditya Udgave and Jayant Punekar are visiting China for the first time.
They are representing their company, an Indian spice and spice mixes firm called Suhana. Over a late lunch at McDonald’s, they are struggling to get their cell phones to work.
“Most of the time the wifi isn’t connecting,” Aditya said. “I don’t know what the problem is, and even when it connects there are errors happening.”
At least they were able to pay for their lunch in cash.
Outside of the exhibition grounds, 86% of transactions in daily consumption are done through mobile payment apps like Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alipay from Alibaba.
Foreign credit cards are not widely accepted in China and the country blocks most major western apps, such as Whatsapp, Instagram and all things Google. Instead, China uses homegrown tech champions including Alipay, Gaode maps, and WeChat, which is the key communication tool in the country.
Since the pandemic, daily life in China has become more dependent on digital apps, including thirty-minute grocery delivery from Alibaba’s Hema and courier services such as Shansong, that could deliver almost any item across the city within an hour.
But visitors have a tough time using Chinese apps. Many won’t work unless it they’re linked to mobile payment.
Over the summer, WeChat and Alipay announced users can link their foreign credit cards to their accounts. That doesn’t work for an American business advisor for cold food chain logistics, Tim McLellan. Instead, he found a loophole using cash.
“I give somebody cash and then they send me the money that goes into my WeChat Pay,” he said.
I have attempted this method with visiting friends from overseas, but it didn’t appear to work because they don’t have a Chinese bank account.
“I don’t have a Chinese [bank] account but it works. I don’t know what to tell you,” McLellan said.
It is a bit of a mystery why some Chinese apps work for foreigners and others don’t. It has taken me three years to finally get the bike-share app from Meituan working. Unless users have a Chinese phone, a Chinese ID, and a Chinese bank account, the apps don’t always run smoothly.
Have a back-up plan, advises trade show exhibitor Napatr Morin with Thai rice cracker brand Chaosua.
Unlike McLellan she cannot get the pay function on her Wechat to work, but she managed to have Alipay set up. She still carries cash.
“Sometimes when you [are] struggling with a scan payment at least you have some cash,” Morin said.
She is also learning Chinese to use Baidu maps since Google maps does not work in China.
China has never been easy for businesses. But these days, the country is a much more open place, according to Jason Hafemeister, acting deputy undersecretary for U.S. trade and foreign agricultural affairs.
“When I came to China first in 1996 it was a very hard place to do business,” he said after grilling some ribeye at the U.S. meat export federation booth. “The right to trade was severely restricted [to] just government entities. Permits were required, high tariffs, and U.S. exports was less than $1 billion of agricultural products.”
Today, China is a $40 billion dollar export market for U.S. agricultural products.
“China is one of our top markets for beef and pork and poultry,” Hafemeister said.
He said many of the restrictions have been removed. Maybe not the digital ones. Though, for Hafemeister, access to Chinese apps doesn’t matter anyway since the U.S. government has national security concerns and wouldn’t allow him to download them on his phone.
Things tend to run more smoothly if a visitor’s home country is on good terms with China.
Exhibitor Alexandr Shubin from Russia is the director of marshmallow maker Bryansk Confectioner. He is visiting China for the first time and said when he arrived, he turned on his cell phone and everything worked.
“We are able to use all the apps we normally use in Russia,” Shubin said through an interpreter. “Including the most important app for our business — banking apps.”
Shubin has not downloaded any Chinese apps yet but intends to if he gets more business in China.
Many exhibitors can have a smooth stay in China without using Chinese apps because they have a local team to rely on.
“I have WeChat but only for chatting [with clients],” Conrado Ferber of the Uruguay National Meat Institute, said. Everything else, such as booking hotels, cars, ordering food at a restaurant and paying, which are almost entirely done through apps in Shanghai, is taken care of by Ferber’s local colleague.
Out of 10 foreign visitors Marketplace spoke to at the trade show, only Australian wine exporter Vikas Gupta has both WeChat Pay and Alipay working. That opens the door to rideshare apps like Didi, grocery giants Hema, and food delivery giants Meituan and Eleme.
At the same time Vikas can use all the apps he uses back home. Most people do so with a virtual private network, but those are not always stable. Instead, Vikas manages fine on his data roaming service.
If visitors find their cell phone carrier or apps are not working, Vikas said maybe China is not the only one to blame.
“It depends what network carrier you are using,” he said. “Maybe your own home country has put up a firewall.”
India has also blocked over 200 Chinese apps after a border dispute with China.
It means that first-time visitors Aditya and Jayant cannot download WeChat, Alipay or Baidu translate. At the same time, the apps they normally use to do business in India like Whatsapp, Telegram and Gmail, are all blocked in China.
Aditya has not been able to keep in touch with any of his customers outside of China.
“We are just texting them from our Indian numbers that we are not available for these [next few] days. We will connect with them after this exhibition.”
Meaning, they tell their clients they’re living off grid, while doing business in the world’s second largest economy.
Still, they say they plan to come back next year.
Additional research by Charles Zhang