When a woman walked to work this month in the bustling southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen, she, like many millions of other Chinese, jaywalked, cutting across a side street to avoid a detour of hundreds of yards to a crosswalk. What happened next, as documented by the woman, a writer calling herself Mao Yan, was an illustration of a brave new world being born in China.
Two traffic policemen approached the woman and told her that she had violated the traffic regulations of the People's Republic of China. Eager to get to her job, Mao Yan apologized and pointed out that there was no fencing to block jaywalkers like her. She hoped to get off with a verbal warning. The officers, however, were intent on prosecution. They demanded her identity card, which is issued to all Chinese citizens. When Mao Yan said that she had not brought hers, they asked for her ID number. When she said she had not memorized it, one officer snapped her picture with a camera phone. Seconds later, he read out her name, her ID card number and date of birth. Using facial recognition technology, he had identified Mao Yan.
Then Mao Yan heard the clatter of a printer from a nearby police kiosk. One of the officers entered the kiosk and returned with a slip. "It was my first ever traffic citation," Mao Yan wrote. On the citation was a quick-response code that she scanned to pay her fine via a messaging app called WeChat that is managed by Tencent, a private Chinese company.