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.
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- Melanie Zhang, Shanghai
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- 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.
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- Melanie Zhang, Shanghai
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- 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.
