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In May 2006, I went to teach at a private English secondary school in Yangshuo, a small town in southern China. When I finished the course, the adult students told me that they wanted to keep in touch with me. They told me to download a Chinese application on my computer called QQ. This application looks a lot like Facebook Messenger.
I told them to open a Facebook account (then Facebook was opened in China) and to add me as a friend. I also told them to give their email addresses. Some gave. But it’s hard to remember those email addresses because they were: [email protected]
I thought the email addresses were very strange. But in 2006, even in the UK, people created email contacts or addresses with all kinds of strange names. But several years later I moved to Beijing to work as a freelance journalist. Even then, I saw that hardly anyone in China is interested in using email.
They often sent me news to write news on the WeChat app on my smartphone. WeChat is a very popular communication app in China. When my news was written, I would also send it to WeChat. They also paid me to write through WeChat.
This mobile application is so effective and so fast that everything seemed to be happening in an instant.
The application is the main
In many western countries, especially in the workplace and for any job, email is considered the means of communication. Among online users in the United States and the United Kingdom, 90.9% and 6% of Internet users are email users, respectively.
The reasons people use the Internet, such as searching for information, products, and services, Internet banking, shopping, watching digital videos, listening to audio, and using social media, are two of the most common uses of the Internet in the United States. and the UK. Contact by email.
But in China the picture is completely different.
Deloitte conducted a survey in 2016 on what Chinese consumers use mobile phones for. It found that Chinese opened emails 22% less than other countries in the world.
WeChat is the main one in China. 89.1% of smartphone users in China use this application regularly. And in China, 84.5% of users of various messaging apps use WeChat.
The Chinese prefer to use WeChat not only for personal reasons, for daily work, but also for office work. The WeChat app was created by a company called Tencent whose Penguin Intelligence research department surveyed 20,000 consumers and found that 7% of Chinese use WeChat at work every day. Approximately 80% of them use telephones, SMS and text messages, and email ranks third (22.8%).
Eva Huesu runs a digital branding company. Taiwanese, she spent a few years in the United States at a young age, working in Shanghai for the past six years. She says she uses email or LinkedIn to communicate with her clients abroad. But all communication with those with whom you do business in China is very different.
“Chinese customers use WeChat. Please send all files to WeChat.”
Cyber Cafe Culture
WeChat is a super application for more than 100 million users in China and this application is now in all aspects of Chinese life. But the Chinese people’s trust in this app and its popularity was probably created several years ago. In the 1990s, Tencent, a new technology company based in China at the time, launched a new product called QQ. It was a messaging platform for exchanging messages on a computer.
According to the World Bank, at that time only 1.2 out of every 100 people in China owned a computer. At that time, one in two people in the United States had a computer. But since 2000, internet cafes have sprung up across China. And there began to be a crowd of young people.
These coffees were made popular mainly by QQ. In QQ, computer games could be played, music could be played, and small blogs could be written via social media in those early days in China.
QQ gave people the opportunity to communicate faster and easier than email. QQ then created a form of instant messaging or live online chat.
James Yuan and Jason Inch, authors of the 2008 book “China’s Future Supertrends” on the future of China, said it was unthinkable that there would be no QQ in China.
Large company merchants printed QQ numbers on their business cards. Each business organization had its own QQ account number.
By 2012, the number of active QQ users was 696 million, more than half of China’s total population that year.
The Tencent company launched the WeChat app in 2011, which is now the most popular communication medium in China. At the same time, computers are leaving China and smartphones are taking their place.
Matthew Brennan from the UK has worked as a digital innovation consultant in China since 2004. In many countries, he says, having an email address is part of a person’s identity, because to get a variety of services online, one has to use an email address to register.
But everything can be done through the mobile application in China. Once you log into the Alipay app of WeChat and Alibaba, you will find a variety of services that do not require a separate login, from booking an appointment through an app, to shopping, office or business, and Talking with friends it’s all you can do, without the need for email.
A culture of quick exchange
Zhang Ling, a professor of economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, believes that WeChat is highly compatible with China’s work culture. That being said, this chat app allows you to do anything at any time and from anywhere; You don’t have to depend on office hours to work or work in the office. If you want something, you don’t have to wait for an answer, you get what you want, which is very much in line with China’s culture, mindset and business environment.
Ms. Zhang says that the boundary between people’s working hours and personal time in China is very weak.
“As a result, employers or managers often send text messages or ask employees to ask questions after hours. They don’t like to wait until the next day for even the slightest response.”
The time it takes to send an email message may require a few emails on a topic, but WeChat can be done through a very quick and concise conversation, Ms. Zhang says.
As a result, this quick and easy messaging app has created additional pressure on people to always work.
The era of quick responses
When a communication platform is created, it also becomes a trend of use. People like Facebook, WhatsApp, and WeChat also hope that people will get an immediate response if they want to know something.
Sir. Brennan says that emails are a very formal means of communication – there is a very old style of letter writing at the beginning of the mail, loved or respected, and at the end, a tribute or greeting, and even a statement. As a result, it takes time to write an email.
He says that in China, and even in many Asian countries, the chat app is becoming the main means of communication at work, excluding email. Because the chat app doesn’t need to be official. The key is to submit questions quickly and get answers quickly.
Alan Casey, a senior official at Profit, an advisory firm operating in multiple Asian countries, says that many Southeast Asian countries, such as China, are now moving faster than the computer age and into the application age. mobiles.
Various social platforms like Facebook, WeChat, Line, Cacao Talk, and Jello are rapidly gaining popularity.
Business friendly app
In addition to WeChat in China, the business-friendly app is designed for large companies and those who want to get employee jobs on a broader level.
Alibaba has created ‘DingTok’, BitDance has created ‘Lark’, WeChat has also created ‘WeChat Work’ for large business organizations. With these applications, large documents can be shared while maintaining a high level of security, documents can be exchanged online, and work related to people’s wages can be done.
The DingTok app allows you to see if the recipient has read the message you sent, or if you haven’t read it, you can send the message again to read it.
The situation in the West
Heilan Zia, 30, is a public relations manager at a Chinese cryptocurrency business. She moved to England from Beijing in 2016 to live with her husband. It says that online services are widespread in Britain. For each job, you must log into each online service organization. But when it comes to WeChat in China, it’s all in one place.
“If you have a WeChat account, you can do everything from one app.”
“In England I have to constantly check emails, in China I never open emails, no one sees emails there. There is no expectation of replying to emails,” Heilan Zia said.
However, it is not true that no one in China uses email at all. Many people have email accounts, but they open emails and see them very randomly.
Sir. Brennan says that those who work in Beijing and Shanghai are more likely to open emails because they are more familiar with international culture.
My old students
As I said at the beginning, when I finished teaching English in China, I asked my former students to send me an email to keep in touch. One of them was Yangshu Lily Wang. We kept in touch by email for a while. Then our communication stopped. He is now 30 years old. He lives in Guangdong, in southern China. I found it on WeChat a couple of years ago. Now we are talking about WeChat.
I asked him if he still had that old email address. Which one did you want to know? He laughed and said, “I had a lot of addresses like 183, 128, MSN.”
You say you don’t remember the last time you used email.
“I use WeChat now. I don’t use QQ much, sometimes I do,” he said.
WeChat is now an integral part of most people’s lives, like Lily Wang in China. Email is a technology of the past for them. Source: BBC
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