Hong Kong Protests 'Show The Dangers of a Cashless Society' (reason.com) 236
"Allowing cash to die would be a grave mistake. A cashless society is a surveillance society," writes Reason, adding that "The recent round of protests in Hong Kong highlights exactly what we have to lose..."
schwit1 shared their report: [T]ens of thousands of Hongkongers took to the streets to protest what they saw as creeping tyranny from a powerful threat. But they did it in a very particular way. In Hong Kong, most people use a contactless smart card called an "Octopus card" to pay for everything from transit, to parking, and even retail purchases. It's pretty handy: Just wave your tentacular card over the sensor and make your way to the platform. But no one used their Octopus card to get around Hong Kong during the protests. The risk was that a government could view the central database of Octopus transactions to unmask these democratic ne'er-do-wells. Traveling downtown during the height of the protests? You could get put on a list, even if you just happened to be in the area.
So the savvy subversives turned to cash instead. Normally, the lines for the single-ticket machines that accept cash are populated only by a few confused tourists, while locals whiz through the turnstiles with their fintech wizardry. But on protest days, the queues teemed with young activists clutching old school paper notes. As one protestor told Quartz: "We're afraid of having our data tracked." Using cash to purchase single tickets meant that governments couldn't connect activists' activities with their Octopus accounts. It was instant anonymity. Sure, it was less convenient. And one-off physical tickets cost a little more than the Octopus equivalent. But the trade-off of avoiding persecution and jail time was well worth it.
What could protestors do in a cashless world...? If some of our eggheads had their way, the protestors would have had no choice.
The article concludes that "there is simply no substitute for the privacy that cash, including digitized versions like cryptocurrencies, provide."
schwit1 shared their report: [T]ens of thousands of Hongkongers took to the streets to protest what they saw as creeping tyranny from a powerful threat. But they did it in a very particular way. In Hong Kong, most people use a contactless smart card called an "Octopus card" to pay for everything from transit, to parking, and even retail purchases. It's pretty handy: Just wave your tentacular card over the sensor and make your way to the platform. But no one used their Octopus card to get around Hong Kong during the protests. The risk was that a government could view the central database of Octopus transactions to unmask these democratic ne'er-do-wells. Traveling downtown during the height of the protests? You could get put on a list, even if you just happened to be in the area.
So the savvy subversives turned to cash instead. Normally, the lines for the single-ticket machines that accept cash are populated only by a few confused tourists, while locals whiz through the turnstiles with their fintech wizardry. But on protest days, the queues teemed with young activists clutching old school paper notes. As one protestor told Quartz: "We're afraid of having our data tracked." Using cash to purchase single tickets meant that governments couldn't connect activists' activities with their Octopus accounts. It was instant anonymity. Sure, it was less convenient. And one-off physical tickets cost a little more than the Octopus equivalent. But the trade-off of avoiding persecution and jail time was well worth it.
What could protestors do in a cashless world...? If some of our eggheads had their way, the protestors would have had no choice.
The article concludes that "there is simply no substitute for the privacy that cash, including digitized versions like cryptocurrencies, provide."
Cryptocurrency? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article concludes that "there is simply no substitute for the privacy that cash, including digitized versions like cryptocurrencies, provide."
With its complete history of transactions, I thought cryptocurrency was also no substitute for (nor a peer to) cash.
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Monero could help with that.
Re:Cryptocurrency? (Score:5, Insightful)
Monero could help with that.
No it cannot. Physical paper and now polymer cash is the end result of thousands of years of research and development. Techies seem think that every generation before them was stupid and couldn't possibly have known anything worthwhile. Well, maybe with all of the hacking, ransomware and other tomfoolery going on they need to take a second look at paper cash and probably paper election registers and ballots too. Electronic everything is not a good idea.
Re:Cryptocurrency? (Score:5, Insightful)
With its complete history of transactions, I thought cryptocurrency was also no substitute for (nor a peer to) cash.
Someone involved in the story felt it was obligatory to include a bitcoin reference...
But it's silly. The protesters weren't buying tickets using cryptocurrencies - they were simply using cash. Tacking on an unsupported reference to cryptocurrency was sophomoric.
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Bully for you if the transaction itself is secure.
If the AI can still nab you based upon the context, then at least you can console yourself about the transaction there in the re-education camp.
Fully anonymous DigiCash already invented (Score:2)
See David Chaum's [wikipedia.org] research work in the 1980's on fully anonymous digital cash.
He also founded the company DigiCash [wikipedia.org] based on those theoretical foundations.
The company no longer exists --- it was ahead of its time, having entered the market before e-commerce was fully integrated within the Internet, as David Chaum explained in 1999 --- but there seems to be no technical reason why his concepts cannot be brought back to life today as a properly anonymous digital equivalent to physical cash. (Blockchain curren
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then your goose is cooked
Your pupper is poached.
Your feline is fricasseed.
This IS China we are talking about.
Re: Cryptocurrency? (Score:5, Informative)
They can track your cash purchase from the ticket machine alongside the CCTV cameras at the station. They know who bought a ticket, and they know where the ticket is used. There are many ways that cash purchases can be tracked. If you use cash thinking that it's anonymous then you are giving yourself a false sense of anonymity.
On the other hand, if you are actively trying to hide there are ways to subvert the reliance on surveillance in a system like octopus. There's nothing stopping you from buying multiple cards, or for swapping/sharing cards with others. They may still be collecting data, but the data becomes unreliable.
Still waiting for that sci-fi digital money (Score:2, Interesting)
Anonymous, untrackable, unfalsifiable. Requires physical contact to transmit and receive. Transactions are near instantaneous.
Alternate summary (Score:5, Insightful)
And even if you fit that and didn't actually go to the protest? Well, it sucks to be you then.
Re:Alternate summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Government connected everyone who withdrew cash for the first time in a long time, cross correlated with those who didn't use their Octopus card that day.
And even if you fit that and didn't actually go to the protest? Well, it sucks to be you then.
Not of much use, since most small purchases in Hong Kong are typically done in cash, so the cost of a couple transit rides won't typically be detected.
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Like Communists have ever had any qualms about prosecuting/persecuting innocent people
Re:Alternate summary (Score:4, Funny)
Communism is a dictatorship because you are not free to pursue your own ends or your own business.
Let's invent, right here, right now, wrightulism. It's like communism, but for writing. Government says what shall be written about, and by whom, for the good of The People. No, the archaic days of the writing wild wild west are over, sorry. Sound swell?
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it seems the real solution is to make sure the government never gets that much power in the first place.
In this situation, it's more accurate to refer to it as "one large group of people" and "another small group of people." One group of people is collectively imposing their will on another group of people through the government. It's really hard to stop that unless the large group of people becomes tolerant.
We saw similar things in the 50s and 60s, with the FBI surveilling groups that the majority of Americans considered to be 'subversive.' In some cases, people's lives were ruined. This was not a good
Re: Alternate summary (Score:2)
They just watched the cellphones ping, and monitor the Facebook chatter.
Don't forget (Score:2)
Government connected everyone who withdrew cash for the first time in a long time, cross correlated with those who didn't use their Octopus card that day.
And then finished with a flourish of using facial recognition with cameras to see who bought tickets and correlated with what ticket was dispensed...
Would have been more impressed to see masses of turnstile hoppers with anti-facialRec makeup.
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People in other parts of the city would have a smartphone that's "on" as normal.
Patterns matter and months of account usage showing "off" and "on" show time and location
this won't really solve the problem (Score:2)
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The ones pushing hardest for a cashless economy are the banks and the state. No reason to trust either. They've done a good job of convincing some people how convenient things are but they also don't seem to have learned history or learned from it.
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Wouldn't the transit system mostly accept coins? Its been a while since I used transit, but they mostly accepted coins and here in Canada with $1 and $2 coins, it's not hard to pay with coins, which I assume are untraceable though I guess they could have a magnetic serial number.
Serial Numbers (Score:2)
Re:Serial Numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you've probably got it about right. Banks, especially with their automatic teller machines, probably have the technology to scan the serial numbers and record who is withdrawing/depositing which dollar bills. Outside of the banks though, those dollar bills can be passed around willy nilly without much tracking going on.
When I worked retail, there was no serial number scanning technology in use that I could see. Even with large denomination bills, there was no looking up the serial number to verify it was legit, we just had to look at the bill, look through the bill, feel the bill, and mark it with a special pen to try to determine if it was real or counterfeit. Even that seemed mostly just for show -- I had a couple bills that seemingly failed the special pen test but my manager said to go ahead and accept the bill anyway!
Now, there has been some talk in the past about new bills having RFID tags built-in. [businessinsider.com] That would allow for a lot more tracking of dollar bills beyond the banks, but there seems to be very little information about whether this has actually been implemented or not.
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AFAIK, no one has made this simple.
Why not?
Re: Serial Numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Itâ(TM)s not simple to track at all. The government itself still uses cash transactions to stay anonymous, and they advise military to use cash while overseas as well, to make it more difficult for an adversary to track the movements of personnel.
Money won't be important in the future (Score:5, Interesting)
In the next 5-10 years, money won't be that important any more. What will be important is being allowed to spend that money. With the demise of cash, every transaction will be able to be tracked, and more importantly, denied. It's all about control.
With cash, nobody controls how you spend your money. It's up to you. With money in your phone or other digital form, they can and will check who you are and who you're spending with. Why? Because it's technically possible, that's why. We're finding out a lot of freedoms and liberties we have today were the result of our ruling class not being technically able to restrict them. Today, it is more and more possible, so naturally they're going to implement these restrictions - all the while chanting "it's for your own good."
We can say that these political dissidents were on the right side. But here in America, we already routinely deny access to payment processing to political dissidents. People get demonetized, shadow banned, and have their Visa merchant accounts cancelled, all because of the same reasons as these Hong Kong dissidents. They're socially harmful, they pose a threat to the ruling class, simply speaking their ideas is a form of violence. Of course, if you're the right kind of person, you agree with the ruling class, and your opinions are echoed in the media, this is a gigantic non-issue to you. You won't notice it at all.
As soon as cash is banned, police won't even have to chase suspects any more. They'll just disconnect your phone's ability to pay, and you'll turn yourself in to the nearest police station just to avoid starvation. It's coming, it's just not quite here yet. Enjoy cash while it lasts.
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"With cash, nobody controls how you spend your money." Wrong, the entity selling you something has to accept your cash. Given a Fascist state like China, they could easily allow the cash to exist yet curtail official transactions. That preserves the untraceable graft the CCP requires to stay in power.
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On what scale is communist the opposite of fascist? Please reply using real differences, not using mostly-meaningless labels like references to where people sat in the French Assemblies.
From my perspective, the only different historically between Communists and Fascists is that one wanted the international socialists to be in charge, while the other wanted the national ones instead. Otherwise, they were very similar, certainly not opposites.
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Ever see a movie (Score:3, Interesting)
There's plenty of ways to track cash when the powers that be want to. You're focusing on a symptom instead of the disease. What you really want is to avoid oppression. You should start by asking why do people get oppressed in the first place. And it's money, it's always money. A small group of elites want all the money. They turn to oppression because you can't take all the money and not oppress people.
It's easy to stop the illegal immigrants (Score:2)
There's plenty of money. There's plenty of food, shelter and healthcare. What we have is a small number of people hoarding it all so they can dole it out bit by bit in exchange for power.
Simply put, what use is being rich if nobody's poor?
Actually it's mostly just right wing Democrats (Score:2)
You need to be a Bernie Bro. Join the side that actually cares for the "deplorables" and everybody else. Punch Up, not down.
Re:Money won't be important in the future (Score:5, Insightful)
A thousand times "this". Even ignoring the tracking thing, which is horrible in itself, there's another example: the steadily increasing number of banks and their ilk that refuse to honor transactions from firearms manufacturers and stores that sell guns.
This is a concept that I find absolutely disgusting. Not just with guns, but any issue the bank happens to find distasteful this morning. If you're going to present yourself as a proxy for cash, you should be forced to abide by the old "legal tender for all debts, public and private" thing. (And why aren't they??)
Just the other day I was pondering the difficulty of anonymously making a long drive (think "Easy Rider", and finding "America"- gads, what a depressing thought today) without having a bazillion pictures taken of you. Even using cash, it's damn near impossible. This is loathsome... but face it, the vast majority of the public is too concerned with shiny things to give a shit. ...and then they came for me...
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Most purchases don't involve a debt so legal tender doesn't help if a store refuses to trade cash for whatever. Just think of all the small stores that refuse to accept $100 bills.
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Well, your first sentence is kind of a stretch- if you take delivery of a good or service, you are in debt until you pay for it- even if that's only seconds. I suppose you could argue that prepayment isn't debt, but... come on, the spirit of the thing is that we all accept this instrument (cash) as a common denominator for financial transactions. It would be interesting to consider how this would be affected by a return to the gold/silver standard... but the argument is even stronger with a fiat currency,
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Not disagreeing with your point, but people are generally free not to exchange money for services or goods for cash. The exception being if there is a debt such as that meal you consumed, and even then they could eat the cost rather then take the cash you offer.
I use cash for almost everything and have never had a problem here in BC.
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Hmm... I'm in the US. IANAL, of course, but... there's a reason we say, "Cash is king". I wonder if CA law is different on that point.
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I think the law about legal tender is pretty similar except it is a narrower here. Coins are limited in amount as legal tender, pennies only up to 25 cents (actually they're discontinued and not generally accepted) or toonies ($2) up to $40 as examples and similar for other coins. Stores etc will also generally accept American money as well though you won't get the best exchange rate.
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You typically pay for goods before they are delivered...
Even in a store, you have not taken possession of the goods until you leave the store, so you pay for them first and then leave the store with them.
It's only in a restaurant that you are likely to incur a debt by consuming the goods before paying for them.
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Are you sure about that? It's a legal question. I'd posit you take possession at the instant you hand the clerk money. (Who then is in debt to *you* if there's any change involved... ack!) I don't think there's anything magic about the point in time when you cross the threshold, except that being the point at which shoplifting takes place. But then there's concealment inside the store to consider.
Ugh, no wonder there's relatively few tech attorneys. What good geek would want to put up with this nonsen
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5-10 Years? Yeah right. (Score:5, Insightful)
While the overall picture you're painting here might occur some day there's no way it would happen in this country in 5 to 10 years. Cash is still the most frequently used form of payment for consumer transactions https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/0... [cnbc.com] , and almost a quarter of Americans use cash exclusively for consumer transactions https://www.experian.com/blogs... [experian.com] .
I seriously doubt cash is going anywhere anytime soon in this country.
Re:5-10 Years? Yeah right. (Score:5, Interesting)
Cash will be unnecessary to track people (Score:2)
Facial recognition. Your mobile phone (with finger print reader). Social media in which other people comment. And big data analysis.
All those Hong Kong mobile phones left at home on a day on which they usually travel? Camera at the end of the street showing them leaving the building. Dead give away.
The technology is all there now. Just needs to be wired together a bit better.
And they are actively perfecting it without any embarrassment across the border in China.
Re: Money won't be important in the future (Score:2)
> What will be important is being allowed to spend that money.
That is contrary to the trend that started 100 years ago and which has no signs of stopping: switching to consumer driven society.
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Being "too poor to be digital" is a problem of the banking system in some countries...
In Europe anyone can get an account with cards to participate in electronic payments.
Many things are cheaper or more convenient when using electronic payments, so it actually benefits the poor. Think ordering online vs retail - often lower prices and larger choice.
There is no merit in cash (Score:3)
A surveillance society is not a surveillance society because it abolishes cash, but because it (or rather its leading class) wants (it) to be a surveillance society, and because everything is being done to get there. Just insisting on preserving cash will not prevent a society to become a surveillance.
Re:There is no merit in cash (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bullshit.
Say I have a neighbor, and he says that he will do some service X for me, and in exchange I agree to do service Y. At no point in this transaction is any monetary value assigned or determined.
Cashless just means that people that really don't want to be tracked will turn to barter, or even just the principle of "owing somebody a favor", which would be even harder for someone to assign any kind of monetary value
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Such a campaign is already underway in some countries...
In the UK if the police search you and find a large quantity of cash they will seize it from you until you can demonstrate where you got it from and what legitimate purpose you have for holding it. In the vast majority of cases, only criminals ever carry large amounts of cash.
Nice try (Score:2)
After reading this article, the security will review the video of the ticket machines and put all the cash payers on the list.
THIS (Score:2)
This is actually far more dangerous to society than requiring gun owners to have training.
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How is requiring gun owners to know how to safely operate a firearm dangerous?
When I first owned a firearm, I got a veteran to give me a couple of hours instruction and was glad I did.
Since I've had too many bullets fly by me and seen too many targets set up in stupid ways. If someone doesn't know enough to consider where a bullet is going to go, they shouldn't be allowed to use a firearm.
Re: THIS (Score:2)
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This is actually far more dangerous to society than requiring gun owners to have training.
There are some arguments around banning guns like that, but training?
1. We require car owners to have training (and in many cases insurance), why not gun owners?
2. Given any citizen militia would be up against highly trained fighters, wouldn't it in fact be safer for society for citizens to be more highly trained?
Re: THIS (Score:2)
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Chilling effects (Score:3)
I'd be curious to know: how many people did NOT participate in the protests because they were afraid of the (data-driven) repercussions?
It's easy to measure how many people attended, but it's hard to measure how many people didn't attend because of the chilling effects. We need much more research into that. Then we can fund out to what degree Social Cooling is an issue. (https://www.socialcooling.com).
The conceit of central planning (Score:5, Informative)
Societies want to tend towards central planning, just like power tends to accrue to those who have power already. These two things go hand-in-hand and it's like resisting a gravitational force.
What do I mean:
* Free market systems are self-organizing (I'm not a "free market fundamentalist", and they can fail - see monopolies or vastly asymmetric information markets in goods with inelastic demand, for example).
* A few interventions here and there optimize the system. But it never stops there. The big thing which has led to perverse incentives is government insurance of private debt, and the ability of banks to risk consumer deposits to risky trading operations (enabled by the crippling, then repeal of Glass Steagall).
* Then you get into a social looting style situation [nyu.edu], leading to debt booms. The debt bubble implodes, the central banks starts buying debt from private institutions via seignorage (printing money).
* They also push interest rates to zero.
And here is where the desire for a cashless society comes into play: They want to push interest rates negative. And without a cashless society, that is difficult. Here is the current "state of the art" for doing that, by high profile Harvard economists:
-- The Case for Implementing Effective Negative Interest Rate Policy, by Andrew Lilley and Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University Department of Economics, April 24, 2019 [hoover.org]
This insane results comes from government intervention gone too far. Also, there is a very small step from this policy to simply stating that the electronic currency is the unit of account, and you need to turn in your cash (demonetization) [investopedia.com].
Now, economists will argue that this step will further limit the possibility of economic downturns, but this is all speculative. Recall that virtually no major economist called the 2008 financial crisis.
This also ignores why currency can exist - it arose from finding a mutually valued, divisible, item. Cowry shells, wampum, cattle, and finally gold, which turned out to be the most widely-used currency over the millennia. Government insurance of private debt also undermines what interest is - the cost of money over time, to compensate the lender for his loss of use and risk. Debt without risk leads to perverse incentives which leads to power consolidation and central planning.
But no, this time, it's dif
They need not worry, (Score:2)
Lies (Score:2)
I used mine.
Besides the pervasive use of cellphones, WhatsApp and Facebook will be used for roundup lists, not octopus cards
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Just Octopus Card Tracking? (Score:3)
How'd they not notice all the surveillance cameras (Score:2)
So the savvy subversives turned to cash instead. Normally, the lines for the single-ticket machines that accept cash are populated only by a few confused tourists, while locals whiz through the turnstiles with their fintech wizardry. But on protest days, the queues teemed with young activists clutching old school paper notes. As one protestor told Quartz: "We're afraid of having our data tracked." Using cash to purchase single tickets meant that governments couldn't connect activists' activities with their Octopus accounts. It was instant anonymity. Sure, it was less convenient. And one-off physical tickets cost a little more than the Octopus equivalent. But the trade-off of avoiding persecution and jail time was well worth it.
Not so savvy with all the camera surveillance around the ticket machines and subways. Now instead of the cards being tracked and eventually linked to a person, they have video of them acting suspiciously, and can easily track where they go with facial recognition anyway.
They should have just used a throwaway card bought somewhere else without cameras if they were paranoid enough to worry about being tracked.
NO (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with cashless and everything to do with not using the local government's transaction system. Their concern was using a literal government provided and government managed card. They could happily use their debit cards or credit cards.
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Hm .. yeah .. but they can be swapped out. The original withdrawal can be tracked and the return to a bank can be tracked. 'But what goes on in between is not necessarily trackable. I've read of clubs in the U.S. where they swapped bills just to avoid possible tracking.
Captcha: blushed
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Yes, but from what I have been able to find out, Hong Kong ATMs spit out bank notes only in denominations of HK$100 and above, whereas fares on the Hong Kong MTR range from HK$1.50 to HK$51.00. Also, the largest note in circulation is HK$20
This means that travellers would have to pay in change from store transactions, and that many fares would have been paid with coins, not notes.
Re: Do they not know about serial numbers? (Score:2)
Largest note is $1000.
They track people with their phones and open government WiFi.
This article is totally bogus
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Re: Do they not know about serial numbers? (Score:2)
You can and often do buy the cards with cash, and refill with cash.
Most distrust linking a credit card octopus.
Re: Do they not know about serial numbers? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this; it's certainly not unique to HK, other cities like Seoul's T-money or Japan's plethora of cards are not only possible to buy/refill in cash, but impossible for western tourists to buy/refill with anything but cash...
Heck I even had to refill Australia's Opal / Myki cards with cash because nothing takes American banks' ancient non-pin credit cards down under...
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Re: Do they not know about serial numbers? (Score:3)
No.
There is not a database where every piece of paper currency that was distributed to a person is tracked.
You only embarrass yourself by claiming this.
The closest thing to what you describe is Where's George? [wheresgeorge.com]
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Use coins?
Re: Do they not know about serial numbers? (Score:2)
Of course! That it's an easy to get, low-skill job that pays well is irrelevant, they do it to get access to untraceable paper currency.
How stupid.
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Once people are forced to offer something tangible for something else, as opposed to money they don't have, it'll do wonders for fiscal discipline
You want to collapse the economy? Because that's how you collapse the economy.
Here's a question: what are you going to barter for all the electricity, water, and sewer services you consume?
Re: Even better (Score:2)
"Here's a question: what are you going to barter for all the electricity, water, and sewer services you consume?"
Labor.
Workers will work. In our society property is the mostly inherited privilege of the few. The great masses - educated and uneducated alike - have nothing to sell but our own labor.
If we cannot sell our labor, we must choose. Starve and die. Or revolt and perhaps die, perhaps throw off the yoke of oppression by which the Owners enslave us.
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Re: Even better (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously? Money is just a representation of value. Itâ(TM)s not perfect, but it allows two people to conduct a transaction when one of them canâ(TM)t provide work or material that the other person wants, which is the case more often than not. It also allows multiple people to work on a single project that no single one of them controls while still being able to âoebarterâ their cash (representing the work they invested) for food and other things. Itâ(TM)s basically impossible to have any sort of collaborative effort without currency. Now you could argue that a finite resource like gold should be our currency. Thatâ(TM)s a separate argument, itâ(TM)s more reasonable than bartering, which is a great way to guarantee income inequality and poverty on a scale humanity has never seen before.
Re: Even better (Score:2)
How many chickens for an MRI? (Score:2)
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Or how many lines of code for a chicken? Barter doesn't scale, any more than gold does.
Cryste - we've got chickens coding now?
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And with the internet and cloud resources, you could theoretically start matching trades in real-time. Good luck staying in compliance with IRS requirements [irs.gov] if at the end of the year all you have are some extra chickens and the feds want their buck-buck-bucks.
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And with the internet and cloud resources, you could theoretically start matching trades in real-time. Good luck staying in compliance with IRS requirements [irs.gov] if at the end of the year all you have are some extra chickens and the feds want their buck-buck-bucks.
Would that not be awesome to pay your taxes with chickens though? Not those dead things, but like 5 thousand live, pissed off roosters
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your mom barters her ass for oxycontin, so I agree it works well.
Well duh! she said thanks for the oxycontin, although she told me it makes your willy wilt
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I'll barter you $1.98 for your brain.
Not a penny less than tree fiddy.
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This is easily a top contender for stupidest comment on Slashdot for 2019. Congratulations, Old Ballsack.
Only if you are so stupid as to take it seriously.
Re:But Google and others were tracking them (Score:4, Informative)
You lie like a WindBourne (Score:2)
But Google was tracking their every move if they didn't turn off their phones. If you haven't kept up with the news, China now requires all visitors to install spyware onto their phones in order to enter the country.
That wasn't to enter China, (which is not the same as entering HK btw) but only at certain internal border checkpoints to a certain region within China.
Far too many people see a headline and think they understand what they are talking about when they are in fact completely clueless. Well done.
Chinese government has a Communist member on every board of directors and EVERY company must aid the Communist party when ever asked to do so.
Wow you followed up your ignorance with an even bigger lie. WindBourne would be proud.
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The Hong Kongers should show the world that they favor human rights and democracy over Chinese nationalism.
By killing people?
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On the other hand, if you insist on a cashless society, nationalize the credit card issuers and underlying transaction processing network first. With cash, the issuing organization is a branch of the government and answerable to elected representatives. If credit cards become the sole means of payment, the same should be true of them.
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So only the government knows everything you buy and without warrant. That's an improvement.
I can currently drop Visa card for Mastercard, amex, Discovery, bitcoin, etc. Try doing that with a government only credit card.
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If you nationalise payment cards, then you will end up with national payment cards...
The biggest benefit of mastercard/visa right now is that you can use it almost anywhere worldwide.
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For card payments, 3% is at the high end of the scale - some merchants charge less, and some types of card have lower fees (eg debit cards).
You are also assuming that accepting cash is free to the retailer, it is not...
The retailer has to keep a stock of change, banks charge for providing change.
Takings have to be counted, for card payments this is automated but for cash much of the counting process is manual and takes employee time.
Takings have to be transported to the bank, for significant amounts this of
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However like many things in China there are many illogical things about how it's used there.
For example you would think that, being a great way to track people, they would try to basically force any foreigners in China to use WeChat or Alipay. Instead it's incredibly difficult to open a WeChat or Alipay wallet without a Chinese bank account. Even if you do have a Chinese bank account any bank that makes it too easy to transfer money in/out internationally (eg. HSBC) you can't use with WeChat. Foreign credit