《紐約時報》專欄作家湯姆?弗里德曼最近造訪中國后，被中國驚人的科技創新速度震驚了。在他最近的專欄文章中，弗里德曼驚嘆道，中國已經變成了一個無現金社會，“所有人無論買什么都用手機支付”，就連街上的乞丐都會用二維碼。

在與中國最大的搜索引擎公司的老總和中國最大的移動外賣速遞公司創始人深入交流之后，弗里德曼感嘆道：“在這個時代，來自互聯網和物聯網的原始數據就是新時代的‘原油’。而中國有7億網民每天在移動互聯網上進行大量交易，這意味著中國正在積累起海量的數據，這些數據既可以用于判定趨勢，也可以用于刺激新的人工智能業務?！备ダ锏侣贸鲞@樣一個結論：“美國低估了中國，將中國的快速發展都歸因到不公平的貿易做法上。對于美國來說，這種心態是很危險的?！?/p>

弗里德曼說得很對。中國的崛起，特別是在電子商務、移動支付、大數據和物聯網等領域的崛起，之所以令美國感到不安，主要有兩個原因。在弗里德曼看來，第一個原因是在中國經濟發展的過程中，中國領導人一直在全球化競爭中對本土企業進行保護，從而限制了外國企業接觸到中國消費者的能力，而外企要想在華獲得更大的市場，就得向中國投降，乖乖交出寶貴的知識產權。弗里德曼并未在文中說出第二個令美國感到不安的原因——中國領導人希望利用科技公司收集的這些數據，進一步收緊對國家和社會的掌控力度。

上周四，阿里巴巴集團發布的年銷售額預測數據進一步證明了中國科技產業的實力。據阿里巴巴預測，2018財年，該公司的年銷售額將突破340億美元，較上年增長45%，且遠遠超過了分析師的預期。這個消息令華爾街激動不已。在開盤后僅僅幾分鐘，阿里股價就上漲12％，達到140.84美元，創歷史新高。從今年年初到現在，阿里股價已經上漲了近50%，令哪些看衰阿里巴巴的人都無話可說了。目前阿里的年銷售額仍落后于亞馬遜的1360億美元，但它的增長速度卻是后者的兩倍。

中國科技產業的創新速度之所以如此瘋狂，是因為其產業內部并不缺乏競爭。中國的互聯網三巨頭阿里、騰訊、百度以及華為、小米、中興等設備制造商都在紛紛捉對廝殺，并且都投入了數十億美元的資金，以在國內外市場創造新的增長機會。比如本周，阿里影業剛剛收購了印度票務創業公司TicketNew的多數股權。中國的科技巨頭都秉承著“越大越好”的理念，因為中國的消費者比較喜歡一站式的購物模式，也就是一個單一的平臺能將他們引到所有需要的產品和服務上。

中國科技企業構建平臺的創新速度也讓西方競爭對手相形見絀。據《金融時報》本周報道，中國科技巨頭正在競相引入面部識別技術。比如阿里巴巴旗下的移動支付公司螞蟻金服的4.5億用戶只需要用手機拍一張面部自拍，就可以登陸他們的在線錢包。百度、建設銀行和滴滴出行也使用了面部識別技術來識別他們的員工或用戶。另據《金融時報》報道，北京的一家名叫Face++的公司在第三輪融資中成功募集了1億美元資本，而且該公司已經將其軟件授權給了螞蟻和滴滴。

而在美國，像谷歌、Nest和Facebook等科技公司在推動面部識別技術上都表現得異常謹慎，唯恐因為隱私問題而遭到消費者的抵制。然而中國公民在購買電話卡、訂機票酒店時，都要刷一遍身份證，所以他們對于提交個人數據并不像美國人那樣敏感。

據中國的商業雜志《財新》報道，螞蟻金服正在穩步推動它的“芝麻信用”體系。芝麻信用會根據一系列標準，給用戶打一個“財務可靠性”得分，這些評分標準包括用戶的在線消費記錄、是否按期償還公共事業服務賬單、是否按期償還信用卡債等因素，以及用戶所居住的城市、是否有房有車等等。據《財新》稱，用戶的得分甚至還會影響他們的親朋好友的分數。

螞蟻金服最近還推出一項新服務，如果用戶的芝麻信用得分很高，那么他們就能更快獲得日本和盧森堡等國的簽證。不過《財新》也指出，螞蟻金服“并沒有明確說明什么樣的人才是在芝麻信用看來‘信用度極佳的人’”，我們也沒有辦法確認芝麻信用的算法本身是否可靠。

中國的《網絡安全法》已于今年6月1日起正式實行。據政府稱，該法旨在保護私人用戶的個人隱私。那么誰將成為《網絡安全法》第一個開刀的對象呢？很可能是蘋果公司。作為一家美國公司，蘋果當年就是通過一部反抗“老大哥”的經典廣告，從而樹立起了它極富個性的品牌形象。（財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has emerged from a recent foray to China newly astonished by the breakneck pace of innovation here. In his latest column Friedman marvels that the Middle Kingdom has become a cashless society in which "everyone pays for everything with a mobile phone" and even beggars use QR codes.

After hobnobbing with the president of China's main search engine and the founder of its largest mobile food delivery company, Friedman rhapsodizes that, "in an age when raw data from the Internet of people and the Internet of things is the new oil, the fact that China has 700 million people doing so many transactions daily on the mobile Internet means it's piling up massive amounts of information that can be harvested to identify trends and spur new artificial intelligence operations." His conclusion: Americans "underestimate China — and attribute all of its surge in growth to unfair trade practices — at our peril."

Just so. And yet the arc of China's rise — particularly in areas like e-commerce, mobile payment, Big Data and the Internet of Things — is troubling in two ways. The first Friedman acknowledges: as China's economy has grown, its leaders have continued to protect local companies from global competition, restricting foreign firms' access to Chinese customers, and forcing them to surrender intellectual property as the price of wider market access. The second reason for concern Friedman leaves unsaid: China's rulers hope to use the trove of data its tech firms are collecting to tighten the grip of an already authoritarian state.

On Thursday, Alibaba offered further evidence of China's growing tech prowess by forecasting its annual sales will surge to more than $34 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, a 45% gain over last year and far higher than analysts' estimates. The announcement inspired rapture on Wall Street. In the first minutes of trading, investors bid BABA's stock price up 12% to $140.84, an all-time high. The stock is up nearly 50% so far this year, confounding naysayers. Alibaba's annual sales still trail Amazon's $136 billion, but they are growing twice as fast.

The pace of innovation in China's tech sector is so frantic because its largest players — the big three Internet companies, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, and device makers like Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE — are locked in battle, and pumping billions into new growth opportunities at home and abroad. Alibaba last week reportedly paid $81 million for an 18% stake in Lianhua, one of China's largest grocery chains. This week, Alibaba Pictures bought a majority stake in Indian ticketing startup TicketNew. The assumption is that bigger is better because Chinese consumers will gravitate to a one-stop-shopping model where a single platform connects them to all the goods and services they seek.

The race to build such platforms has spawned innovations that give Western competitors pause. The Financial Times reports this week that Chinese tech giants are barreling forward in the use of face recognition technologies. Alibaba's mobile payments affiliate, Ant Financial, allows its 450 million users to log into their online wallets by taking a selfie. Baidu, China Construction Bank, and ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing use the technologies in identify employees as well as customers. A Beijing-based company called Face++ has raised $100 million in its third round of financing, according to the FT, and has licensed its software to Ant and Didi.

U.S. companies like Google, Nest and Facebook have been squeamish about pushing face recognition technologies, fearing backlash from customers concerned about privacy. But China's citizens, who are obliged to slide ID cards into chip readers to set up mobile phone accounts, make travel reservations and book hotels, seem less fussed about surrendering personal data.

Meanwhile, Caixin, a Chinese business magazine, reports Ant is steadily expanding use of its "Sesame Credit" system, which assigns customers a "financial reliability" score according to criteria such as their online spending records, how regularly they pay their utility bills or credit cards, and other factors such as what city they live in, whether they own a house or car. Caixin says the ranking even factors in the scores of acquaintances.

Ant recently introduced a new service to expedite visa applications to Japan and Luxembourg for customers with high Sesame Credit scores. Caixin notes that Ant has offered "no clear indication of what exactly constitutes Sesame's definition of an 'extremely creditworthy person'" or whether the algorithms underlying the rankings are themselves reliable.

Should Chinese customers worry about those algorithms? After all, they make life more convenient, and Western financial institutions use credit rating systems too. Critics say gains in Big Data and artificial intelligence are more insidious in China than the West because China's political system offers far fewer protections for individual rights. Some fear that in China, "Fourth Industrial Revolution" technologies are setting the stage for an Orwellian distopia.

On June 1, China implemented a sweeping new cybersecurity law the government says was designed to protect the personal information of private users. The first business to run afoul of those new rules? Apple, the American company that defined its brand with iconic ads rebelling against "Big Brother."