92.YU HUI, a boisterous four- year-old hiving in Shanghai s what marketing people call a digitalnative. Over a year ago, she started communicating with her parents using WeChat, a Chinese mobile-messaging service. She is too young to carry around a mobile phone. Instead she uses a Mon Mon, an internet-connected device that inks through the cloud to the WeChat app. The cuddly critter s rotund belly disguiscs a microphone, which YU Hui uscs to send rambling updates
and songs to her parents ,it lights up when she gets an incoming message back.
Like most professionals on the mainland her mother uses what rather than e-mail to conduct much of her business. The app offers everything from free video calls and instant group chats to news updates and easy sharing of large multimedia files. It has a business-oriented chat service akin to America's stack Yu Hui's mother also uscs her smart phonc camera to scan the WeChat QR(quick response )codes of people she meets far more ofien these days than she exchanges business
cards. YU Hui's father uses the app to shop online, to pay for goods at physical stores, settle utility bills and split dinner tabs with friends, just with a few taps. He can easily book and pay for axis,dumpling deliveries theatre tickets, hospital appointments and foreign holidays,all without ever leaving the Wechat universe.
As one American venture capitalist puts it, Wechat is there' at every point of your daily contact with the world, from morning until night.It is this status as a hub for all internet activity, and as a platform through which users find their way to other services, that inspires Silicon alley firms including Facebook to monitor wechat closely. They are right to cast an envious eye. People who divide their time between China and the West complain that leaving Wechat behind is akin to stepping back in time.
According to paragraph I, what is a"digital native"?