This is a short Weibo story that tells you many other stories about China. Yesterday, some Weibo users posted abt an app called "社会扶贫" (Social Poverty Alleviation). It's a crowdfunding app designed by CN State Council's poverty alleviation office...1/n 
On the app ppl in poverty posted what they need alongside their photos: a pair of winter shoes, a bag of rice, a mug. All profiles are "verified" with real IDs, by village-level officials, and they're in the national database for households in poverty...The posts went viral 2/n
The posts received LOTS of attention (15k repost+). Ppl are struck by the poverty, how little the poor households demand, and of course, how amazing it is to have a government-endorsed app to help them. But...3/n
Here's the twist: People soon find out the app only received 1.8 out of 5 on Apple App store, based on thousands of reviews (the score jumped up to 1.9 as of writing). How come? The reviews are quite revealing: 4/n
1. Many reviews suggested ppl in poverty--including those who don't own smartphones--were forced to install the app. Here's 1 review: For village cadres, there are quotas to be fulfilled--to sign poor households *and* donors (this one is 1 yr old, before the app went viral) 5/n
2. There are also many disgruntled "donors" who are forced to download this app. This one comes from a college student, also posted a year ago: "I didn't get into college to download apps". Apparently this is part of his school tasks. 6/n
Here's another review, posted this May: [I was] required to install this app by 3pm. If you have a Chinese app store account, go check out the thousands of reviews! In China, it's the most critical cyber space abt Chinese gov&policy rn 7/n
It's quite a sight. So here's a video--enjoy. Based on the huge amount of old reviews, places that were given "poverty alleviation" quotas go even beyond schools and state-owned businesses. 8/n
Words like "Garbage" & “Formalism” dominated the comment section, plus plenty detailed accounts from ppl who were asked to install this app. I'll keep u posted if there's any new development. So far this incident perfectly captures so many layers of modern Chineseness: 9/n
Besides poverty, social segregation, national database for poor ppl, it's fascinating that CN gov is adopting the e-commerce/start-up style to push app downloads on the ground (esp in rural areas). This also happened for Xuexi Qiangguo, the app helps u learn Xi's teachings 10/n
btw, "地推" and “用户下沉” are two things many CN tech companies are chasing in recent yrs. The former means ground-level marketing; the latter means to successfully indoctrinate rural, uneducated users. In terms of apps, CN gov is doing both, with political power 11/n
So, the app perfectly encapsulates the recipe of many policy failures over the yrs: a seemingly good intention; a fragmented policy on various levels (curious who built the app); little or no coordination; ground-level "smart" execution in coping w/ the unreasonable policy,...
...In this case, the end result is a seemingly helpful tech solution for poverty, which nobody--from the designer, promoter, donor, to ppl in need--actually believe or care. They all just have to live with it.
It's like a metaphor for so many things. /END
It's like a metaphor for so many things. /END
