Hasta La Ideas

This is the fourth post in a 7-part series from Panthea Lee of service design consultancy, Reboot. In The Messy Art of Saving the World, Lee will explore the role of design in international development.

You hear a lot in the United States about China these days: While we’re occupying Wall Street, they’re “taking our jobs” and enjoying a booming economy.

But look a little closer, and you’ll see that the so-called 99% exist in China, too (even though we often don’t hear their protests). The country’s transition to a market economy has left many citizens behind, and rapid growth has created a large, deep gap between rich and poor.

During a recent research trip to China, we saw this inequality in stark relief. “The city folks just get richer, and us peasants just get poorer,” we heard time and again in rural areas; between 1985 and 2009, the income gap between urban and rural households increased 118 percent. The country’s 55 different ethnic minority groups suffer as well; Mongols, for example, forbidden from their traditional livelihoods, now live on irregular, unreliable, and psychically devastating social support payments from Beijing.

Times in the cities are hard, too, for migrant workers, the familiar face of China’s economic boom. This 17 percent of the population accounts for half of the country’s GDP, but they don’t even have legal status. A 1958 registration system, hukou, set up to stem rural-to-city migration and protect urban workers, ironically now ensures that these workers are a low-paid, high-profit commodity—with no rights.

The Time is Right

Reboot recently spent time with these three marginalized groups—the rural poor, ethnic minorities, and migrant workers—to research the impacts of three decades of disruptive change, and to design new services to improve their livelihoods. We’re focusing especially on financial inclusion; as I wrote two weeks ago about Pakistan, spreading the security of financial services can provide systematic support to the people who need it most.

There’s reason to be optimistic: The world’s largest mobile carrier, China Mobile, recently acquired 20 percent of the government-run Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and is planning to launch mobile financial services nationwide. And the timing is right: A large number (70 percent) of the population already have mobile phones, and there are extensive agent networks and high remittance payment rates, suggesting that mobile banking could catch on.

How to Design for China

Our task is to make sure this coming mobile banking revolution—unlike too many other revolutions—is inclusive and accessible for everyone, and especially the disenfranchised populations who could stand to benefit the most. As we work through our findings, we’ve found three key principles that will help make sure this happens:

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