https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/07/08/chinas-experience-with-high-speed-rail-offers-lessons-for-other-countries

China's Experience With High Speed Rail Offers Lessons For Other Countries

Long term planning and standardization of design are among the country's key success factors

BEIJING, July 8, 2019—China has put into operation over 25,000 kilometers of dedicated high-speed railway (HSR) lines since 2008, far more than the total high-speed lines operating in the rest of the world.  What type of planning, business models, and approaches to construction enabled this rapid growth? In an era when many railways face declining ridership, what pricing and services make high-speed rail attractive to this large number of passengers and maintain financial and economic viability? A new World Bank study seeks to answer these and other questions.

"China has built the largest high-speed rail network in the world. The impacts go well beyond the railway sector and include changed patterns of urban development, increases in tourism, and promotion of regional economic growth. Large numbers of people are now able to travel more easily and reliably than ever before, and the network has laid the groundwork for future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," said Martin Raiser, World Bank Country Director for China.

The World Bank has financed some 2,600 km of high-speed rail in China to date. Building on analysis and experience gained through this work and relevant Chinese studies, China's High-Speed Rail Development summarizes key lessons and practices for other countries that may be considering high-speed rail investments.

A key enabling factor identified by the study is the development of a comprehensive long-term plan to provide a clear framework for the development of the system. China's Medium- and Long-Term Railway Plan looks up to 15 years ahead and is complemented by a series of Five-Year Plans.

In China, high-speed rail service is competitive with road and air transport for distances of up to about 1200 km. Fares are competitive with bus and airfares and are about one-fourth the base fares in other countries. This has allowed high-speed rail to attract more than 1.7 billion passengers a year from all income groups. Countries with smaller populations will need to choose routes carefully and balance the wider economic and social benefits of improved connectivity against financial viability concerns.

A key factor keeping costs down is the standardization of designs and procedures. The construction cost of the Chinese high-speed rail network, at an average of $17 million to $21 million per km, is about two-thirds of the cost in other countries.

The study also looks into the economic benefits of HSR services. The rate of return of China's network as of 2015 is estimated at 8 percent, well above the opportunity cost of capital in China and most other countries for major long-term infrastructure investments. Benefits include shortened travel times, improved safety and facilitation of labor mobility, and tourism. High-speed networks also reduce operating costs, accidents, highway congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions as some air and auto travelers switch to rail.

This report is the first of a series of five studies of transport in China—high-speed rail, highways, urban transport, ports, and inland waterways—produced by TransFORM, a knowledge platform developed by the World Bank and China's Ministry of Transport to share Chinese and international transport experiences and facilitate learning in China and other countries.

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PRESS RELEASE NO: 2019/07/08

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Contacts

Beijing

Li Li

86-10-5861 7850

lli2@worldbank.org

https://www.naval-technology.com/features/frigate-vs-destroyer-difference

Frigate vs Destroyer: What Is The Difference Between The Two Warships?

By Talal Husseini

Warships are a key part of a navy's surface fleet and come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on their capabilities and functions. Two common types of warship used in most navies are frigates and destroyers. What is the difference between these two vessels?

The US Navy Zumwalt-class destroyer DDG 1000. Credit: US Navy.

The Royal Navy's Duke-class frigate. Credit: Maxine Davies.

The German Navy's Sachsen-class destroyer launching a guided missile. Credit: Bundeswehr.

A Russian Navy Sovremenny-class frigate. Credit: Stephen P Davis.

Frigates and destroyers are two of the most common warships in a navy's fleet. Both are designed for quick manoeuvrability and can be used to escort and protect larger vessels from air, surface and underwater threats. The similarities between frigates and destroyers have led to some European navies using the terms interchangeably.

On the other hand, frigates are more common, with almost every navy in the world in possession of a frigate as part of its navy fleet, while only 13 nations possess destroyers, according to the Global Fire Power Index 2019. Frigate vs destroyer – what are some of the key differences?

Almost every navy has a frigate

Of the 55 nations that own frigate ships, China leads the world with 52 frigates across three different classes, followed – perhaps surprisingly – by Taiwan, which has 24, and the US with 22 vessels.

Destroyers are much less common, with only a handful of navies possessing these kind of warships. The US Navy owns the most destroyers with 68 currently in service. Japan comes in second with 37, followed by China, which owns 33 vessels.

Some nations, such as Spain and Germany, officially have no destroyers although many of their frigate ships are almost identical to what other nations would class as a destroyer vessel.

Destroyers are usually bigger…

Destroyer warships come in a range of sizes. Smaller destroyers, such as the Royal Navy's Type 45 Daring class and Russia's Project 956 Sovremenny class, measure in at around 150m in length, with a beam of around 17-18m.

Then there is the US Navy's Zumwalt-class destroyer, a 190m long colossus with a beam of 24.6m. The Zumwalt class weighs in at nearly 16,000t making it double the weight of smaller destroyers that weigh in at around 8,000t at full load.

While frigates vary greatly in terms of size, many of the top frigates such as Russia's Admiral Gorshkov class and Germany's Sachsen class are smaller than destroyers, measuring in at around 130m-150m in length. They are roughly the same width as destroyer vessels.

"The key distinction between frigates and destroyers is size and, by extension, function," says Dr Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

"By virtue of being larger, destroyers can more easily carry and generate the power for more powerful high-resolution radar and a larger number of vertical launch cells. They can thus provide theatre wide air and missile defence for forces such as a carrier battle group and typically serve this function.

"Frigates are thus usually used as escort vessels to protect sea lines of communication or as an auxiliary component of a strike group whereas destroyers are generally integrated into carrier battle groups as the air defence component or utilised to provide territorial air and missile defence."

…and faster

Frigates are generally slower than destroyers although in modern times there is not a significant difference. One of the faster frigate ships is the Indian Navy's Shivalik class that is touted to travel up to 32kn (59km/h) at max speed, while others range between 26-30kn (48-55km/h).

Despite its impressive size, the Zumwalt-class destroyer can travel up to 30kn, slightly slower than the smaller Sovremenny and Daring classes, which have an average of 32kn. The Zumwalt class is still as fast – if not faster – than most frigate classes.

Modern destroyer vessels peak at around 33kn (61km/h), while the fastest ever recorded destroyer was the French Navy's Le Terrible that reached 45.1kn (83.5km/h) during sea trials in 1935.

Weapons and EW capabilities vary based on roles

Unsurprisingly, both frigates and destroyers are armed with the latest weapons and defence systems, which are vital for carrying out their escort and protect roles.

Some frigates, such as the Royal Navy's Duke class, have specialised anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities and are fitted with enhanced sonar equipment and torpedoes.

ASW-enhanced frigates come with helipads and hangars that accommodate helicopters capable of identifying and attacking nuclear submarines using torpedoes and depth charges. The Duke class is equipped with two twin Sting Ray torpedo tubes and can accommodate either a Westland Lynx helicopter armed with two torpedoes or a Westland Merlin with four torpedoes.

"Frigates, being a smaller vessel can provide limited air defence to themselves and nearby vessels but are not particularly well suited to theatre air defence," says Kaushal.

"They tend to be utilised primarily for anti-submarine warfare roles as well as providing short range air defence as part of a larger surface group."

Some destroyers have been modified specifically for launching anti-ship and anti-aircraft guided missiles. The US Navy's Zumwalt and Arleigh Burke classes have this capability, as does the Royal Navy's Daring class and Russia's Sovremenny class.

Take, for example, the Daring class's Sea Viper comprehensive defence system that allows the Royal Navy to track targets from up to 400km away using a Sampson active electronically scanned array, and a 48-cell Sylver Vertical Launching System (VLS) with Aster 15 and Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles.

The behemoth Zumwalt class comes with 20 Mk57 VLS modules with 80 launch cells, and can fire Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles and Tactical Tomahawk subsonic cruise missiles.

Cost differences between frigates and destroyers

It is very difficult to pinpoint the unit prices of certain classes of ship, let alone types of ships. However, here are some estimates of the most expensive vessels.

The most expensive destroyer in the world is the US Navy's Zumwalt class. The very first model – the DDG 1000 – cost around $4.2bn according to USNI News, $3.8bn for non-recurring engineering costs and an additional $400m for post-delivery and outfitting. The second and third (in production) ships are estimated to be cheaper, at $2.8bn and $2.4bn respectively. This is expensive compared to the Royal Navy's Daring-class destroyers that are priced at a little over £1bn ($1.36bn).

In contrast, frigate ships are much more cost-efficient. The Royal Navy's Duke class was priced at around £130m per vessel, while the much anticipated Type 31 frigate was estimated in 2017 to cost around £250m per unit, according to a UK Government fact sheet.

The German Navy's Sachsen class is one of the most expensive frigate classes, costing around €2.1bn ($2.4bn) for the three ships in total.

The Rainbow Trajectory

On June 5th,A Qatar Airways Plane Flying Over Bamberg Produced The Magical Rainbow Trajectory.

20-Year-Old German Photographer @ Nick Beyersdorf

@Nick Beyersdorf

World's Largest Stone Buddha Re-opens To Visitors

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6872901/Worlds-largest-stone-Buddha-opens-visitors-emergency-restoration.html

World's largest stone Buddha re-opens to visitors after experts carried out emergency restoration on the 1,300-year-old statue in China

• The gigantic 233ft tall Leshan Buddha was hand-carved out of a mountain face by a river in Sichuan, China
• Experts repaired the cracks on the statue's chest and cleaned its face during the six-month conservation 
• Tourists can once again climb the 250 steps leading to the top of the Buddha's head after it re-opened today 
• The famous figure built in Tang Dynasty is the world's largest carved stone Buddha, according to UNESCO 

By TRACY YOU FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 13:28 BST, 1 April 2019 | UPDATED: 08:08 BST, 2 April 2019

 
 
 
 
 
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China's gigantic 71-metre-tall (233-foot-tall) Leshan Buddha re-opened to the public today after experts carried out emergency restoration on the ancient holy statue. 

The famous Leshan Buddha is the largest stone Buddha in the world, according to UNESCO. 

Emergency and preliminary conservation was given to the chest, abdomen and face of the 1,300-year-old gigantic figure, which was hand-carved out of a mountain face from the eighth century in south-western China's Sichuan Province.

Meet the Leshan Buddha: The 71-metre-tall (233-foot-tall) statue in China's Sichuan Province has re-opened to tourists after undergoing six months of emergency restoration on its face and chest. The picture of the Buddha was taken on March 25

Workers cleaned the Leshan Buddha's face and repaired the cracks on its chest and abdomen. The repair project started in October last year and the Buddha was covered up in scaffolding. The picture of the Buddha was taken on March 19

The repair project started in October last year and the Buddha was covered up in scaffolding. The scaffolding was removed in late March after experts mended the cracks on the statue. 

Tourists are once again able to climb the 250 steps leading to the top of the Buddha's head - also carved out of the mountain - and see the entirety of the towering sitting Buddha from the Min River by the mountain. 

A live-streaming video on People's Daily's social media site shows throngs of excited tourists flocking to see the Buddha today. 

Construction of the Buddha began in 713 AD during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) at the meeting point of three rivers, the Min, Qingyi River and Dadu River.

The statue is based on the image of Maitreya, which is regarded as the future Buddha in the Buddhist tradition. It is situated next to the Lingyun Temple on Lingyun Mountain in Leshan. 

Tourists are once again able to climb the 250 steps leading to the top of the Buddha's head and see the entirety of towering sitting Buddha from the Min River by the mountain. The enormous holy figure was hand-carved out of a mountain face

An aerial picture shows workers in the process of removing scaffolding on March 25. Construction of the Buddha began in 713 AD during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) at the meeting point of three rivers, the Min, Qingyi River and Dadu River

Lingyun Temple means the 'cloud side' temple in Chinese, and the name indicates the high altitude of the enormous statue. 

Legend has it that in ancient times many boats sailing past Leshan had capsized in the area, therefore the monks at the Lingyun Temple decided to build a Buddha statue to 'save living creatures'.

It took the monks 90 years to complete the religious and artistic masterpiece.  

The Buddha's head is 14.7 metres (48.2 feet) tall, 10 metres (32.8 feet) wide and has 1,021 coils in the hair. 

Its nose as well as the two eye brows measures 5.6 metres (18.3 feet) long respectively, while its mouth and each eye are 3.3 metres (10.8 feet) in length. 

The Buddha is so big that its finger is 8.3 metres (27.2 feet) long on average and each foot, measuring 10.9 metres (36 feet) in length, can seat more than 100 people.   

Each of its toe nails occupies a space as big as two parking bays. 

A file photo shows the Buddha before the restoration. A worker at the Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Spot said the Buddha had regional cracks and damage on its face, chest and abdomen after being exposed in nature for more than a millennium

A worker at the Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Spot said the Buddha had regional cracks on its face, chest and abdomen after being exposed in nature for more than a millennium. 

The worker said these damage could have caused rocks to fall and pose danger to tourists underneath. 

An expert from Leshan Giant Buddha and Grottoes Institution claimed the latest repair was not 'systematic restoration', but a 'scientific and research project'. 

The repair project could lay foundation for the future overall protection of the Buddha, the expert told Xinhua News Agency last October. 

The Leshan Buddha is an extremely popular spot for tourists in China. It received more than 220,000 visitors during the country's National Day holiday last October.  

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The Internet was obsessed with this philosophy-quoting homeless man in China. Now he's fled the fame.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-internet-was-obsessed-with-this-philosophy-quoting-homeless-man-in-china-now-hes-fled-the-fame/2019/04/01/519e43e2-5220-11e9-bdb7-44f948cc0605_story.html

The Internet was obsessed with this philosophy-quoting homeless man in China. Now he's fled the fame. 

Shen Wei, or "Master Shen," during a "fan meeting" in Shanghai last month. (Zhuang Fang/Bonfire)

April 2

BEIJING — The "Vagrant Master" has been offline for more than a week.

The last time people saw him, the scrawny 52-year-old known as Shen Wei was being escorted into a white Mercedes-Benz by a middle-aged man in an orange jacket.

When asked where he was going, Shen replied, "To seek refuge."

But even before he could get into the car, a man in his 20s ran up to ask for an autograph. Shen turned to sign the fan's notebook.

China's latest Internet sensation isn't a wildcat locked in a staring contest with her zookeeper, a wealthy businessman caressing his thousand-dollar pet ducks or a children's choir dedicating a whole song to tech giant Huawei.

He is a vagabond who doesn't have a social media account and doesn't own a smartphone. He defied stereotypes: Shen is educated and eloquent, and he provides for himself. He is dubbed the Vagrant Master or Master Shen on the Chinese Internet, and his every word has been recorded by live-streamers, shared across social media in the form of 15-to-30-second videos and closely watched and analyzed by millions.

After three months of stardom, he'd had enough.

"I blame no one, but I hate the Internet," Shen told Chinese newspapers on March 22, at the height of his fame. "The Internet has brought me nothing but trouble."

This unlikely viral star was discovered by social media when clips of him quoting Aristotle, Confucius and Dante began to surface on Douyin, a short-video platform. To the surprise of many, this homeless man — with uncombed hair, soiled clothes and unwashed beard — turned out to be well versed in literature and philosophy.

YouTube

Viewers were intrigued.

"Extraordinary hair worthy of a Taoist priest, eyes brimming with radiating vigor, and the deportment of a real gentleman," read a top comment on Douyin. "This is what a true master should look like!"

Shen quickly became an antihero for those tired of trying to climb social and economic laddersin a country obsessed with youth, novelty, education, fame, wealth and good looks.

But Shen's virtual fame became all too real in mid-March.

One video showed a road sign pinpointing Shen's location, and visitors soon started flooding

into the otherwise unremarkable neighborhood in Shanghai's suburban Pudong district.

Among the pilgrims were ­e-commercegurus who promised him a six-digit payment in exchange for commercial endorsements, curious spectators eager to catch a glimpse of the celebrity in person, and Internet-fame wannabes fighting for the best camera position to get up close with the master.

"I know people are treating me like a monkey," Shen says in one video. (Zhuang Fang/Bonfire)

Over the following days, "Liu Lang Da Shi" (literally "the Vagrant Grand Master") began trending on Weibo, a microblogging site like Twitter, and clips of the erudite vagabond easily got hundreds of thousands of views within hours on short-video platforms.

Short videos are huge in the world's second-largest economy. China has nearly 830 million Internet users, and more than 70 percent of them now use short-video or live-streaming applications, according to the state-run China Internet Network Information Center. By 2020, the short-video sector is expected to exceed $5 billion in market value.

To attract more traffic, established media apps such as TikTok, Kuaishou and Vigo Video seek out pop stars, artists and big names from other social media sites.

Starting on March 17, the name "Shen Wei" topped searches on the Chinese search engine Baidu, and Weibo posts related to #Vagrant­Master were read by tens of millions.

Every morning when the vagabond opened his door, he would find dozens, or even hundreds, of people already waiting at the doorstep of his temporary shelter — a deserted office storeroom. Each time he opened his mouth, dozens of phones and cameras were ready to record. As soon as he finished a memorable quote, people would respond with thunderous applause and cheers.

Shen quickly came to think he was being exploited.

"I know people are treating me like a monkey," Shen said in a 25-second video on March 19, more to himself than to a full room of smartphone-wielding spectators. "Nobody came to see me with a pure heart. You did this for money."

People who hung around Shen sought various rewards: A woman in a leather jacket who claimed to be Shen's girlfriend attracted 400,000 followers within four days after setting up a TikTok account. A jobless young man in a red coat, purporting to be Shen's child, became a regular guest on popular live-streaming channels. A 10-word piece of calligraphy Shen wrote on a piece of scrap paper was reported to have sold for more than $13,000 at an online auction.

Smartphones are trained on Shen Wei as he collects items from a recycling bin. (Zhuang Fang/Bonfire)

Mainstream media took notice, too. Led by the Red Star News, newspapers and TV crews began arriving at the modest space that Shen had called home for the past 26 years.

Soon, everyone wanted to know the mysterious man's life story.

Born into a relatively well-off family in the southwest city of Chengdu and raised in Shanghai, Shen was among the first generation of Chinese after the Cultural Revolution to attend college, according to the Chengdu Economic Daily. After graduation, he worked as auditor at a district government office in Shanghai, the Audit Bureau of Xuhui confirmed.

In 1993, he was forced into early retirement for his "abnormal behavior," including salvaging waste paper from office trash cans and sorting recyclable garbage that only "beggars" would touch, Shen told the Meiri Renwu newsmagazine.

After that, he was hospitalized twice. In 1995, he decided to live as a full-time garbage man, local newspapers reported.

"I was destined to be a trash collector," Shen told the Red Star News. "I admire Gandhi and want to live an ascetic life like him."

By March 19, Shen's cult ­following on social media had a cult following on social media. A widely shared photo on Weibo shows smartphone-wielding young people surrounding him, drawing comparisons to ­Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Citing safety hazards and the disturbance to neighbors, police cordoned off the area around Shen's squatting space and set up meter-high wood fences. But his fans remained undeterred, with some gathering before 7 a.m.

Shen took extreme measures.

He showered and got his hair cut. Of course, videos of him with a trimmed mustache, combed shoulder-length hair and a brand-new black blazer appeared on multiple live-streaming sites within minutes.

By Monday, there was a note on his squat that read: "Mr. Shen is exhausted, both mentally and physically, and will be away for a while. Thank you!"

 

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18256226/facebook-wechat-messaging-zuckerberg-strategy

Facebook Wants To Be WeChat

By   Nick Statt   and   Shannon Liao     Mar 8, 2019, 1:12pm EST

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

 

Mark Zuckerberg   laid out a new direction   for Facebook this week that shifts its focus from a sprawling series of social apps to a one-stop shop messaging service that combines everything the company has to offer. If there's an analog to what Facebook is trying to build, it exists in the form of Tencent's WeChat, the single largest social network in China. There are a number of key differences between the two products, but the ultimate goals look markedly similar: singular, all-purpose networks that can be leveraged to serve users all kinds of other services, from mobile payments to gaming to direct lines of contact to businesses.

The push to become more of a WeChat-like service has been a long time coming. Facebook has been constantly dogged by privacy violations due to its aggressively ad-fueled and feed-based approach to social networking, and in the US, it appears to be shedding younger users. A promised privacy-first approach to this messaging service would address Facebook's immediate shortcomings, while the bundle of services could serve to further entrench every one of Facebook's offerings.

WeChat is often considered the "everything app" for China's   nearly 800 million smartphone owners : it's a game console, a bank, and even a gateway to Chinese ride-sharing giants, food delivery, and thrift shopping. It's available in other regions as well, giving WeChat a monthly active user base of over 1 billion.

Because of its ubiquity and dominance, WeChat has been a desirable, seemingly impossible-to-replicate product for social media companies. As the do-everything app, it supersedes device manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi, and it almost acts as a replacement for operating systems like iOS and Android. Nothing, including Apple's iMessage or Facebook's Messenger or even the encryption-friendly WhatsApp, can compete with WeChat in China.

 

"What WeChat has done is embed a constant stream of new services and features onto their platform. The new features take advantage of the strong network effect that WeChat already has, as the defacto messaging platform in China," says Willy Shih, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. By continuously adding services, WeChat only becomes a more integral part of daily life, and it's harder to abandon as a result. "It's convenient for everything: payments, getting info, ordering things," he adds. As Shih notes, even the   homeless in China use WeChat-supported QR codes   to accept mobile payments when panhandling.

 

Facebook's ambitions to build a do-everything app platform for a global audience goes back years, beginning with its 2012 and 2014 acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively. Since then, as Instagram and WhatsApp staved off competition from rivals, Messenger has shouldered a bulk of the responsibility in becoming Facebook's would-be do-everything app platform.

 

In the ensuing half-decade of Messenger's ongoing development, Facebook has bolted on gaming, AI chat bots, augmented reality camera features, mobile payments, and numerous other features that are designed to get you to treat Messenger like its own distinct and chat-focused mini-Facebook. In 2014, the company   hired David Marcus   — a hugely successful digital payments entrepreneur who oversaw PayPal's strategic acquisition of Venmo parent company Braintree — to run Messenger, signaling Facebook's ambitions to turn the platform into a service provider.

 

Now, with plans to bring private messaging front and center, Zuckerberg could finally create the version of WeChat that the world outside of China has thus far lacked. It could be large and scarily time-consuming, luring users to engage with the app for not just birthdays and group chats, but for style and products (Instagram) and news sharing (Facebook and WhatsApp). The Facebook mega app could extend into users' daily lives for entertainment, news, and commerce.

 

But building that kind of sprawling, do-everything network is an immense challenge, and even WeChat has not done without a good deal of help and good luck. In China, it's received government subsidies, and many of its rivals have been blocked from running: that includes Messenger since 2009, South Korea's Line since 2015, and WhatsApp in 2017, significantly trimming down the competitive landscape. The government has been happy to do that in exchange for   being able to retrieve deleted WeChat messages   to help in police investigations. (Tencent denies that it stores chat histories.)

 

WeChat largely   bombed in its attempts   to find success beyond the Chinese market. It was slow to go international, and when it finally did in 2012, Facebook was already taking off in the markets WeChat was trying to enter. The international app was also a ghost of its Chinese self; the global version of WeChat was limited to sending people private messages.

 

Facebook has already done well expanding across the globe, which could help it succeed where WeChat failed. Internationally, Facebook and WhatsApp are the most used social media apps, dwarfing the likes of Snapchat, Twitter, Viber, and others, according to a   Pew Research Center report   published yesterday.

 

The multipronged strategy of having the main Facebook app, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram also means that it's no issue if one country gravitates toward one Facebook product over another. And Facebook hasn't stopped there, either. It has a number of internet connectivity efforts in developing countries — including a gigabit Wi-Fi project called Terragraph and an app called Express Wi-Fi — that are designed to bring more people online and convert them into Facebook users of one type or another.

 

Facebook will face other issues, though. Combining its apps is likely to concern the European Commission, which is regularly troubled by the behaviors of tech giants. The United States Congress, similarly, has questioned Facebook on whether it qualifies as a monopoly. Politically, the tide is turning against these kinds of mega tech companies. This morning, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) proposed breaking up tech giants,   including Facebook   as part of her presidential campaign platform.

 

It's also not guaranteed that a messaging-first approach will win over users. In China, it's the older generations who favor using WeChat, giving the app a kind of dated reputation not too unlike Facebook's among teens. If both apps don't step it up, they could fall out of style as users grow older.

 

After Zuckerberg laid out his plans for Facebook, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect, thanks to WeChat. We also can anticipate the obstacles a Facebook monster app would face: slowing user growth, a heavy reliance on ad revenue, and Western regulatory forces that would seek to rein it back in. It's the ultimate story of merging cultures, as two (or more) apps combine so many features that they become nearly the same thing and risk losing what makes them so attractive in the first place. But Facebook has a chance to write its own story, if it can take lessons from where WeChat has stumbled.