From Edward's Facebook：I've just bought a Xiaomi Redmi 4X on tmall.com owned by the Alibaba Group, with a MasterCard issued in the United States. The experience was beyond amazing: 1. Less than just a decade ago when the Scandinavian company NOKIA had the monopoly on the worldwide cellphone market (with the exception of the U.S.), China did not have a marketable cellular brand of its own. Today, the Chinese phones are sweeping the developing economies as well as some of the developed economies (e.g. Southern Europe). Those phones are not Made in China, but they are made by China with a very high value-to-price ratio. Take Xiaomi Redmi 4X, for example, the phone has similar tech specs of an iPhone 6s at only 30% of the price. That being said, while I believe it would still take years before the leading Chinese makers like Xiaomi to take on Apple within the upper market echelon in areas such as design, OS, and hardware integration, I'm super amazed at the momentum how things have been developing and I can't wait to test drive Xiaomi when I go home this year. 2. The online payment services industry used to be an oligarchy by the group of SOE banks that mandated a hard token USB security key plugged in on a Windows OS during every transaction. I like to travel, and I have a Mac, so I have been attempting to find ways to circumvent that protocol for years (including, creating a virtual HK account of some sort). Apparently today, Alibaba is providing an API integration hook-up with the global Visa and MasterCard networks which effectively enables everyone in the world to purchase goods sold on the Chinese e-commerce marketplaces with any currency of choice. That wasn't the fun part. The mobile app facetimed me during password reset to confirm my identity for the account I haven't had logged on for 8 years. Yes, I was video chatted by a robot who somehow mysteriously confirmed my identity. No SSN, no Mother's Maiden Name, no nothing. Praise capitalism.