中美创新：如今谁在山寨谁？

China is gradually shedding its reputation as the world’s technology copycat. Some Chinese companies are also leading the way in new services and business models.

中国正逐渐甩掉全世界最大科技山寨国的名声，一些中国公司在新的服务和商业模式上已经处于领先地位。

The move toward pioneering also reflects a generational change, says Derrick Xiong, chief marketing officer of drone maker Ehang.

无人机制造商亿航Ehang的首席营销官熊逸放表示，中国企业引领新潮流也反映出一种代际变迁。

The new generation of entrepreneurs, “the post-90s, were born to be global,” he says; “they have never experienced hard times in China so they have a completely different mindset” more akin to that of their peers in the US or Europe than their parents.

他说，新一代企业家都是“90后，出生在全球化时代。他们从未经历过艰难困苦，因此他们的思维方式完全不同”，比他们的父辈更接近美国或欧洲同龄人的思维。

报道认为，中国在以下几个领域处于领先位置：

Bike-sharing 共享单车

China has embraced bike-sharing, pioneering a dockless model that offers cyclists advantages over comparable services in London and New York: bikes are unlocked using mobile apps, and can be picked up and left anywhere. Many are even GPS-tracked. Mobike (orange) and Ofo (yellow) have led the pack. One financier, only half joking, opines that the only barrier to entry will be when they run out of colours.

中国迎来了共享单车时代，引领了无桩单车模式，为骑行者提供了比伦敦和纽约的同类服务更大的优势：单车可通过手机应用解锁，骑车者可随地骑走或停放单车。很多单车甚至配有GPS定位。摩拜（橙色）和Ofo（黄色）是最大的两家。一名金融家开玩笑说，进入这一行唯一的障碍将是颜色不够用了。

A subsequent crackdown by regulators, irked at the piles of dumped bikes littering cities, portends potholes on the road. But that hasn’t deterred the like of LimeBike from rolling out a similar service in the US states of California, North Carolina and Florida following the dockless, QR code-based Chinese model.

但随后监管者决定对单车进行整顿，因为他们对废弃的单车乱丢在各个城市感到很恼火。这预示着共享单车未来的发展路途不会太平坦。但这并未阻止LimeBike之类的共享单车追随无桩、扫码的中国模式，在美国加州、北卡罗来纳州和佛罗里达州推出类似服务。

QR codes 二维码

For much of China, the QR code, a type of barcode, is the key that unlocks the digital world. A swipe of the matrix with a mobile device lets a user hire a bike, pay for goods and grab a new contact’s details: why swap business cards when you can just hover your phone over that of your new acquaintance?

对中国大多数地区来说，二维码是解锁数字世界的钥匙。用户用移动设备扫一扫这个图案，就可以租用共享单车、花钱买东西以及获取新联系人的信息：当你只要用手机扫一下新朋友的手机就能交换信息时，何必要交换名片呢？

Companies in the US, where the QR code was dismissed in 2024, now seem to be changing their view. Snapchat picked up the idea in 2024, allowing users to follow one another as easily as their WeChat peers by scanning each others’ QR codes, and proceeded to facilitate their use to access websites. Facebook this year is piloting ‘rewards’ QR codes to secure discounts in certain shops, while Spotify has adopted the technology to allow users to share music.

二维码在2024年受到美国企业的摒弃，如今美国企业似乎变了主意。Snapchat于2024年采纳了这一理念，允许用户通过扫码来加好友，就像微信一样方便，并进而使用二维码为用户访问网站提供便利。脸书今年试点“奖励”二维码，用户在指定商户扫码可打折，同时Spotify推出了扫码分享音乐。

Social media 社交媒体

WhatsApp’s launch last month of business accounts showed the US messaging app taking another step down the path forged by Chinese peer WeChat.

WhatsApp上个月推出企业账户，这表明这款美国消息类应用程序在由中国同行微信开辟的道路上又迈了一步。

WeChat, Tencent’s chat and social media app, has long courted the business world. It is how government, celebrities and businesses from Burberry to Mondelez connect to customers in the Chinese social media space spicing up their chat with cool fashion show snaps, special offers and sales promotions and post information or news. WeChat has more than 20m ‘official accounts’, according to industry estimates, though not all are verfied.

微信是腾讯旗下的聊天和社交媒体应用，一直在向商界进军。在中国，政府、名人以及从巴宝莉到亿滋等企业使用微信与社交媒体中的客户建立联系（发布超酷的秀场照片、特别折扣和促销活动来活跃与用户的交流）、发布信息或资讯。根据业内估计，微信如今拥有超过2000万个“公众号”，但并非都是认证账号。

WhatsApp is now jumping on that bandwagon, following in the footsteps of WeChat. In an effort to help businesses keep in touch with their customers and to make money the Facebook-owned app has begun offering ‘verifed profile’ accounts, so customers know they are contacting the right shop or service.

WhatsApp如今正准备投身于此，效仿微信。为了帮助企业与客户保持联系并赚取利润，这款脸书旗下的应用开始提供“认证”账户，这样一来客户就知道他们联系的是正牌商店和服务提供商。

Retail 零售

The world drew a collective gasp when Amazon splashed out $13.7bn in June to buy Whole Foods, bringing its cut-throat online competition to the bricks-and-mortar world of artisanal breads and organic kale. But Chinese rivals were ahead of the game. E-commerce giant Alibaba snapped up stakes in domestic supermarket group Lianhua in May and before that, in department store Intime. JD.com, which operates a similar asset-heavy model to Amazon, has outlined plans for a massive bricks and mortar presence.

今年6月，当亚马逊斥资137亿美元收购全食超市、把它残酷无情的线上竞争带到售卖手工面包和有机甘蓝的实体店时，整个世界倒吸了一口气。但中国竞争对手已经走在了前头。电商巨头阿里巴巴于5月收购联华超市集团股份，之前还投资了银泰百货商场。采用与亚马逊类似的重资产运营模式的京东也计划大规模进军实体店。

Alibaba calls the model “new retail”, fusing the physical and online worlds to better please customers try on a frock, buy cat food from the store for later delivery and a rice box to takeaway there and then and ultimately amass more data for itself.

阿里巴巴将这种模式称为“新零售”，把实体店和网络世界结合起来，以更好地取悦客户，并最终为自己积累更多数据。顾客可以在店内试穿连衣裙、买猫粮，商家随后送货上门，或点份外卖带走。

What next? 下一个领域？

There are plenty of innovations still to tap or expand. Mobile payments in the US are a fraction of those in China, where the market was worth $8.8tn last year, according to iResearch. Gifting digital money for instance, at Chinese new year is taking hold elsewhere, already adapted in India via Tencent-backed Hike, a New Delhi-based messaging unicorn.

现在还有很多创新有待开发和拓展。美国移动支付市场规模远不及中国，根据艾瑞咨询的数据，去年中国移动支付市场价值8.8万亿美元。比如中国人春节时相互发放的电子红包正走出国门：由腾讯注资的Hike已经在印度推出电子红包服务。Hike总部位于新德里，是一家消息应用独角兽公司。

But arguably the most covetable trend in China is the most basic: education. China last year produced roughly nine times as many graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as the US. Even allowing for China’s bigger population, it still punches heavily above its weight, suggesting lot of room for many more innovations to be birthed in China.

但中国最令人称羡的趋势也是最基本的：那就是教育。去年中国培养的科学、技术、工程和数学方面的毕业生大约是美国的9倍。即使考虑到中国人口众多，这一数量也相当庞大，这也意味着还有更多的创新会在中国诞生。

China is gradually shedding its reputation as the world’s technology copycat. Some Chinese companies are also leading the way in new services and business models.

中国正逐渐甩掉全世界最大科技山寨国的名声，一些中国公司在新的服务和商业模式上已经处于领先地位。

The move toward pioneering also reflects a generational change, says Derrick Xiong, chief marketing officer of drone maker Ehang.

无人机制造商亿航Ehang的首席营销官熊逸放表示，中国企业引领新潮流也反映出一种代际变迁。

The new generation of entrepreneurs, “the post-90s, were born to be global,” he says; “they have never experienced hard times in China so they have a completely different mindset” more akin to that of their peers in the US or Europe than their parents.

他说，新一代企业家都是“90后，出生在全球化时代。他们从未经历过艰难困苦，因此他们的思维方式完全不同”，比他们的父辈更接近美国或欧洲同龄人的思维。

报道认为，中国在以下几个领域处于领先位置：

Bike-sharing 共享单车

China has embraced bike-sharing, pioneering a dockless model that offers cyclists advantages over comparable services in London and New York: bikes are unlocked using mobile apps, and can be picked up and left anywhere. Many are even GPS-tracked. Mobike (orange) and Ofo (yellow) have led the pack. One financier, only half joking, opines that the only barrier to entry will be when they run out of colours.

中国迎来了共享单车时代，引领了无桩单车模式，为骑行者提供了比伦敦和纽约的同类服务更大的优势：单车可通过手机应用解锁，骑车者可随地骑走或停放单车。很多单车甚至配有GPS定位。摩拜（橙色）和Ofo（黄色）是最大的两家。一名金融家开玩笑说，进入这一行唯一的障碍将是颜色不够用了。

A subsequent crackdown by regulators, irked at the piles of dumped bikes littering cities, portends potholes on the road. But that hasn’t deterred the like of LimeBike from rolling out a similar service in the US states of California, North Carolina and Florida following the dockless, QR code-based Chinese model.

但随后监管者决定对单车进行整顿，因为他们对废弃的单车乱丢在各个城市感到很恼火。这预示着共享单车未来的发展路途不会太平坦。但这并未阻止LimeBike之类的共享单车追随无桩、扫码的中国模式，在美国加州、北卡罗来纳州和佛罗里达州推出类似服务。

QR codes 二维码

For much of China, the QR code, a type of barcode, is the key that unlocks the digital world. A swipe of the matrix with a mobile device lets a user hire a bike, pay for goods and grab a new contact’s details: why swap business cards when you can just hover your phone over that of your new acquaintance?

对中国大多数地区来说，二维码是解锁数字世界的钥匙。用户用移动设备扫一扫这个图案，就可以租用共享单车、花钱买东西以及获取新联系人的信息：当你只要用手机扫一下新朋友的手机就能交换信息时，何必要交换名片呢？

Companies in the US, where the QR code was dismissed in 2024, now seem to be changing their view. Snapchat picked up the idea in 2024, allowing users to follow one another as easily as their WeChat peers by scanning each others’ QR codes, and proceeded to facilitate their use to access websites. Facebook this year is piloting ‘rewards’ QR codes to secure discounts in certain shops, while Spotify has adopted the technology to allow users to share music.

二维码在2024年受到美国企业的摒弃，如今美国企业似乎变了主意。Snapchat于2024年采纳了这一理念，允许用户通过扫码来加好友，就像微信一样方便，并进而使用二维码为用户访问网站提供便利。脸书今年试点“奖励”二维码，用户在指定商户扫码可打折，同时Spotify推出了扫码分享音乐。

Social media 社交媒体

WhatsApp’s launch last month of business accounts showed the US messaging app taking another step down the path forged by Chinese peer WeChat.

WhatsApp上个月推出企业账户，这表明这款美国消息类应用程序在由中国同行微信开辟的道路上又迈了一步。

WeChat, Tencent’s chat and social media app, has long courted the business world. It is how government, celebrities and businesses from Burberry to Mondelez connect to customers in the Chinese social media space spicing up their chat with cool fashion show snaps, special offers and sales promotions and post information or news. WeChat has more than 20m ‘official accounts’, according to industry estimates, though not all are verfied.

微信是腾讯旗下的聊天和社交媒体应用，一直在向商界进军。在中国，政府、名人以及从巴宝莉到亿滋等企业使用微信与社交媒体中的客户建立联系（发布超酷的秀场照片、特别折扣和促销活动来活跃与用户的交流）、发布信息或资讯。根据业内估计，微信如今拥有超过2000万个“公众号”，但并非都是认证账号。

WhatsApp is now jumping on that bandwagon, following in the footsteps of WeChat. In an effort to help businesses keep in touch with their customers and to make money the Facebook-owned app has begun offering ‘verifed profile’ accounts, so customers know they are contacting the right shop or service.

WhatsApp如今正准备投身于此，效仿微信。为了帮助企业与客户保持联系并赚取利润，这款脸书旗下的应用开始提供“认证”账户，这样一来客户就知道他们联系的是正牌商店和服务提供商。

Retail 零售

The world drew a collective gasp when Amazon splashed out $13.7bn in June to buy Whole Foods, bringing its cut-throat online competition to the bricks-and-mortar world of artisanal breads and organic kale. But Chinese rivals were ahead of the game. E-commerce giant Alibaba snapped up stakes in domestic supermarket group Lianhua in May and before that, in department store Intime. JD.com, which operates a similar asset-heavy model to Amazon, has outlined plans for a massive bricks and mortar presence.

今年6月，当亚马逊斥资137亿美元收购全食超市、把它残酷无情的线上竞争带到售卖手工面包和有机甘蓝的实体店时，整个世界倒吸了一口气。但中国竞争对手已经走在了前头。电商巨头阿里巴巴于5月收购联华超市集团股份，之前还投资了银泰百货商场。采用与亚马逊类似的重资产运营模式的京东也计划大规模进军实体店。

Alibaba calls the model “new retail”, fusing the physical and online worlds to better please customers try on a frock, buy cat food from the store for later delivery and a rice box to takeaway there and then and ultimately amass more data for itself.

阿里巴巴将这种模式称为“新零售”，把实体店和网络世界结合起来，以更好地取悦客户，并最终为自己积累更多数据。顾客可以在店内试穿连衣裙、买猫粮，商家随后送货上门，或点份外卖带走。

What next? 下一个领域？

There are plenty of innovations still to tap or expand. Mobile payments in the US are a fraction of those in China, where the market was worth $8.8tn last year, according to iResearch. Gifting digital money for instance, at Chinese new year is taking hold elsewhere, already adapted in India via Tencent-backed Hike, a New Delhi-based messaging unicorn.

现在还有很多创新有待开发和拓展。美国移动支付市场规模远不及中国，根据艾瑞咨询的数据，去年中国移动支付市场价值8.8万亿美元。比如中国人春节时相互发放的电子红包正走出国门：由腾讯注资的Hike已经在印度推出电子红包服务。Hike总部位于新德里，是一家消息应用独角兽公司。

But arguably the most covetable trend in China is the most basic: education. China last year produced roughly nine times as many graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as the US. Even allowing for China’s bigger population, it still punches heavily above its weight, suggesting lot of room for many more innovations to be birthed in China.

但中国最令人称羡的趋势也是最基本的：那就是教育。去年中国培养的科学、技术、工程和数学方面的毕业生大约是美国的9倍。即使考虑到中国人口众多，这一数量也相当庞大，这也意味着还有更多的创新会在中国诞生。