In recent years, a number of China's technological innovations have been making their moves in the world. Among them, four stand out with a reputation of China's "four great new inventions" in modern times, which have made the daily life of the public more and more convenient.
DOCKLESS SHARED BICYCLES
Presently, there are over 30 bike-sharing companies in China that operate around 10 million bicycles for shared use to individuals in dozens of Chinese cities.
Although the service of shared bikes originated from Western countries, China surprised the world with a business model of station-less shared bikes that spearheads the sharing economy.
Compared with traditional shared bikes, dockless bikes allow users to simply pick up or park a bike anywhere on the street, instead of at designated docking points.
By combining GPS, smartphone apps, mobile payment and Internet of Things technology, China's system of dockless shared bikes provides the public with a convenient and affordable transport alternative.
To unlock a bike, you need to scan a QR (QuickResponse) code on a shared bike through a smartphone app. To finish riding, you manually lock the bike and pay for your ride though mobile payment services that are connected with the bike app, such as AliPay and the WeChat wallet.
China's two leading bike-sharing operators, Mobike and Ofo, have been gearing up for global expansion.
Mobike entered Singapore in March and Manchester, Britain, in June. Its distinctive orange bikes can also be spotted on the streets of Florence and Milan, Italy. This September, Mobike is set to land on the soil of London. Ofo, similarly, has begun operating in the United States, Britain, Singapore and Kazakhstan.
In the financial market, the two rivalries have also gone neck and neck. In June, Mobike raised 600 million U.S. dollars in a Series E financing round led by China's Internet titan Tencent, the largest in the global bike sharing industry to date. Now, the company's total funding has reached nearly 1 billion dollars. In February, Ofo also raised 450 million dollars, which valued the company at 1 billion dollars.
HIGH-SPEED RAIL
Boasting low cost and quick delivery, China has built the world's longest high-speed rail (HSR) network. Branded as a "name card" for China, HSR runs at speeds of 250-350 kilometers per hour (km/h).
By the end of 2016, China had a 124,000-km railway network, which had the world's largest HSR network of more than 22,000 km. It had operated 2,595 high-speed trains by 2016, which took up 60 percent of the world's total high-speed trains.
HSR service debuted in China in 2008. Since then, the country has witnessed an average annual growth of over 30 percent in passenger trips, according to statistics from the China Railway Corporation. By 2016, there had been more than 5 billion passenger trips on China's bullet trains in eight years.
Currently, China is working on next-generation bullet trains with a maximum speed of 400 km/h. By 2020, one fifth of the country's 150,000-km railway network will have been HSR, linking more than 80 percent of major cites across the country, according to data from the National Development and Reform Commission.
China's HSR has also gone global. In 2014, China completed the construction of its first overseas high-speed rail in Turkey. In June 2015, China and Russia inked deals for 770 km of track connecting Moscow and Kazan.
In October 2015, China and Indonesia signed a joint-venture agreement on the construction of a high-speed rail between Jakarta and Bandung. Besides, the China-Thailand railway is currently under construction.
