《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》專欄作家湯姆?弗里德曼最近造訪中國(guó)后，被中國(guó)驚人的科技創(chuàng)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(guó)已經(jīng)變成了一個(gè)無現(xiàn)金社會(huì)，“所有人無論買什么都用手機(jī)支付”，就連街上的乞丐都會(huì)用二維碼。

在與中國(guó)最大的搜索引擎公司的老總和中國(guó)最大的移動(dòng)外賣速遞公司創(chuàng)始人深入交流之后，弗里德曼感嘆道：“在這個(gè)時(shí)代，來自互聯(lián)網(wǎng)和物聯(lián)網(wǎng)的原始數(shù)據(jù)就是新時(shí)代的‘原油’。而中國(guó)有7億網(wǎng)民每天在移動(dòng)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上進(jìn)行大量交易，這意味著中國(guó)正在積累起海量的數(shù)據(jù)，這些數(shù)據(jù)既可以用于判定趨勢(shì)，也可以用于刺激新的人工智能業(yè)務(wù)?！备ダ锏侣贸鲞@樣一個(gè)結(jié)論：“美國(guó)低估了中國(guó)，將中國(guó)的快速發(fā)展都?xì)w因到不公平的貿(mào)易做法上。對(duì)于美國(guó)來說，這種心態(tài)是很危險(xiǎn)的。”

弗里德曼說得很對(duì)。中國(guó)的崛起，特別是在電子商務(wù)、移動(dòng)支付、大數(shù)據(jù)和物聯(lián)網(wǎng)等領(lǐng)域的崛起，之所以令美國(guó)感到不安，主要有兩個(gè)原因。在弗里德曼看來，第一個(gè)原因是在中國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展的過程中，中國(guó)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人一直在全球化競(jìng)爭(zhēng)中對(duì)本土企業(yè)進(jìn)行保護(hù)，從而限制了外國(guó)企業(yè)接觸到中國(guó)消費(fèi)者的能力，而外企要想在華獲得更大的市場(chǎng)，就得向中國(guó)投降，乖乖交出寶貴的知識(shí)產(chǎn)權(quán)。弗里德曼并未在文中說出第二個(gè)令美國(guó)感到不安的原因——中國(guó)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人希望利用科技公司收集的這些數(shù)據(jù)，進(jìn)一步收緊對(duì)國(guó)家和社會(huì)的掌控力度。

上周四，阿里巴巴集團(tuán)發(fā)布的年銷售額預(yù)測(cè)數(shù)據(jù)進(jìn)一步證明了中國(guó)科技產(chǎn)業(yè)的實(shí)力。據(jù)阿里巴巴預(yù)測(cè)，2018財(cái)年，該公司的年銷售額將突破340億美元，較上年增長(zhǎng)45%，且遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過了分析師的預(yù)期。這個(gè)消息令華爾街激動(dòng)不已。在開盤后僅僅幾分鐘，阿里股價(jià)就上漲12％，達(dá)到140.84美元，創(chuàng)歷史新高。從今年年初到現(xiàn)在，阿里股價(jià)已經(jīng)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(zhǎng)速度卻是后者的兩倍。

中國(guó)科技產(chǎn)業(yè)的創(chuàng)新速度之所以如此瘋狂，是因?yàn)槠洚a(chǎn)業(yè)內(nèi)部并不缺乏競(jìng)爭(zhēng)。中國(guó)的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)三巨頭阿里、騰訊、百度以及華為、小米、中興等設(shè)備制造商都在紛紛捉對(duì)廝殺，并且都投入了數(shù)十億美元的資金，以在國(guó)內(nèi)外市場(chǎng)創(chuàng)造新的增長(zhǎng)機(jī)會(huì)。比如本周，阿里影業(yè)剛剛收購(gòu)了印度票務(wù)創(chuàng)業(yè)公司TicketNew的多數(shù)股權(quán)。中國(guó)的科技巨頭都秉承著“越大越好”的理念，因?yàn)橹袊?guó)的消費(fèi)者比較喜歡一站式的購(gòu)物模式，也就是一個(gè)單一的平臺(tái)能將他們引到所有需要的產(chǎn)品和服務(wù)上。

中國(guó)科技企業(yè)構(gòu)建平臺(tái)的創(chuàng)新速度也讓西方競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手相形見絀。據(jù)《金融時(shí)報(bào)》本周報(bào)道，中國(guó)科技巨頭正在競(jìng)相引入面部識(shí)別技術(shù)。比如阿里巴巴旗下的移動(dòng)支付公司螞蟻金服的4.5億用戶只需要用手機(jī)拍一張面部自拍，就可以登陸他們的在線錢包。百度、建設(shè)銀行和滴滴出行也使用了面部識(shí)別技術(shù)來識(shí)別他們的員工或用戶。另據(jù)《金融時(shí)報(bào)》報(bào)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(jīng)將其軟件授權(quán)給了螞蟻和滴滴。

而在美國(guó)，像谷歌、Nest和Facebook等科技公司在推動(dòng)面部識(shí)別技術(shù)上都表現(xiàn)得異常謹(jǐn)慎，唯恐因?yàn)殡[私問題而遭到消費(fèi)者的抵制。然而中國(guó)公民在購(gòu)買電話卡、訂機(jī)票酒店時(shí)，都要刷一遍身份證，所以他們對(duì)于提交個(gè)人數(shù)據(jù)并不像美國(guó)人那樣敏感。

據(jù)中國(guó)的商業(yè)雜志《財(cái)新》報(bào)道，螞蟻金服正在穩(wěn)步推動(dòng)它的“芝麻信用”體系。芝麻信用會(huì)根據(jù)一系列標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，給用戶打一個(gè)“財(cái)務(wù)可靠性”得分，這些評(píng)分標(biāo)準(zhǔn)包括用戶的在線消費(fèi)記錄、是否按期償還公共事業(yè)服務(wù)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(jù)《財(cái)新》稱，用戶的得分甚至還會(huì)影響他們的親朋好友的分?jǐn)?shù)。

螞蟻金服最近還推出一項(xiàng)新服務(wù)，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(guó)的簽證。不過《財(cái)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(rèn)芝麻信用的算法本身是否可靠。

中國(guó)的《網(wǎng)絡(luò)安全法》已于今年6月1日起正式實(shí)行。據(jù)政府稱，該法旨在保護(hù)私人用戶的個(gè)人隱私。那么誰將成為《網(wǎng)絡(luò)安全法》第一個(gè)開刀的對(duì)象呢？很可能是蘋果公司。作為一家美國(guó)公司，蘋果當(dāng)年就是通過一部反抗“老大哥”的經(jīng)典廣告，從而樹立起了它極富個(gè)性的品牌形象。（財(cái)富中文網(wǎng)）

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."