I just came back from a trip to Xi’an. This was my 3rd trip to China in the last three years, and it is clear that China is / has been a first mover in several areas. Unfortunately, foreigners (and I’m referring to tourists, not foreigners who live in China) seem almost 100% shut out of some of the most useful innovations. Examples from my trip include:

Cashless payments - wechat and Alipay are unavailable unless you have a Chinese bank account. In some cases this is just a minor inconvenience having to pay with cash, and other times it means you actually can’t buy whatever it is (eg. from a vending machine) that only accepts wechat and Alipay. One particularly perverse example I faced was that the machine to buy a stored value metro card only accepted Alipay and wechat, and they didn’t sell the card at the station counter. A helpful article I read referred me to a local bank which also sells the cards.... but they also only accept cashless payments.

Didi - on a previous trip to China this worked great for me. But now after getting a new credit card I was unable to add the new credit card number (or any credit card number) to didi. After trying to delete and reinstall the app I discovered that the app is no longer even available in foreign iTunes stores, so it is now completely unavailable to me.

Bike sharing - mobike requires you to register your passport to rent a bike, and the verification wasn’t completed for me by the time I left 2 days later. Also their app only took wechat and Alipay. I gave up with ofo after the texting code didn’t reach me within the 1 min time limit because my phone was roaming.

These seem like really easy problems to solve which would greatly enhance people’s experiences in China, and their perception of China. How much longer before somebody (government, or private company) decides they want to solve them?