Chinese Children Experiencing Cashless Confusion
Aug 29, 2024
The ubiquity of cashless payments in China is eroding children’s understanding of money and denying them ‘essential’ financial education, warns a recent opinion piece from East China’s largest English-language newspaper, Shanghai Daily.
Published on Shanghai Daily’s digital media site SHINE, the piece opens with the story of Melanie Zhang, a legal specialist for a multinational trade firm in Shanghai, who was shocked to realise her daughter was entirely unfamiliar with physical currency when the Grade 2 student came to her struggling with a maths problem involving banknotes and coins.
I doubt if she had even seen any real money before the homework. As far as I can remember, we had been used to online payment for a while when she started to know things. Money is numbers on screens, which I assume is all her idea about finance.
The author, Lu Feiran, observes that Zhang’s daughter ‘is not the only child these days who doesn’t have a solid idea of money’, and—while digital payments are mainstream and familiarity with them is important—‘it could be dangerous that children miss the opportunity to form a proper financial concept when they should.’ The relationship between earning money, and choosing how to save or spend it, lacks tangibility for the new generation.
When I asked her where money comes from, she told me it's just in the phone. You scan a code, type in some numbers, and you'll get what you want.
Given this situation, Feiran believes ‘it is no wonder that irrational consumption from minors is increasing’, pointing to a case heard in a Beijing court this May of a 10-year-old boy giving 140,000 yuan (around $19,300) to a livestreamer. His mother wished to have the money returned, but her appeal was denied, partly because ‘this was not the first time [she] had tried to retrieve a large sum of money spent online by her son.’
It's not rocket science to grasp the idea of how this child was poorly educated about money and he is definitely not the only victim. When [children] have no idea how money is earned, or how money is not equivalent to numbers—to most social classes—it’s no surprise that they don't respect or cherish money.
The solution is simple, says Feiran: ‘getting to know real money, banknotes and coins that are tangible, is a good start.’ Chu Chaohui, a researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, points out that parents will best set their children up for future financial success by helping them understand money, and using cash is a simple and easy way to introduce it to them.
The ability of using money is essential to children. Where does money come and go, how to distribute money, and how to use [it] to solve problems they will face in their future life. [This] is what parents should teach their children when they’re young.