FYI

Texting in China: using voice messages is back.

a  ot of it is due to the clumsy way to type Chinese characters.

factoid: Mainland Chinese don't get upset at loud voices but Taiwanese are less boisterous.

with many not speaking Mandarin and many others whose Mandarin is actually a non understandable dialect, characters "make sense".

But one doubts if Chinese ideograms will ever replace easier alphabets.

But it won't stop China's aim to make the internet king. LINK

and the part about e commerce is big: AliBaba is changing how rural China shops.

 I learned about Amazon while working in an isolated Minnesota area, where the nearest bookstore was 40 miles away and the nearest decent bookstore was 100 miles away.

But even before then, I tended to use catalogues for convenience for many things.

other under reported stories is how cellphones are changing the world (not everyone can go on line, but everyone has a cellphone, even my friend in rural Zimbabwe has one)

and of course, the story of Chinese investement in South America and Africa is also an under reported story.