We wrote about a week ago that Chinese cities are escalating their fight for talent.

It seems that Xi’an, probably the most aggressive among the cities, has not made the process of getting local household registration even more streamlined, with the help of mobile internet.

The following is the WeChat Mini Programme run by Xi’an Public Security Bureau. Built on WeChat platform, the ‘green channel’ allows users to easily submit a local household registration application.

As we can see, the application is submitted at 21:13 on May 1st – OK after office hours, and even if it was within office hours, May 1st is a public holiday. Next morning, the police officer started reviewing the documents at 10:13 and issued an approval …. within six minutes.

Painless, and free (applicant does not need to pay anything). Even if they had to pay, they would be able to do it quite easily with WeChat Pay, which is on the same chat app as the Mini Programme:

So, what drives innovation (and efficiency) here?

—

Thanks for reading The Low Down (TLD), the blog by the team at Momentum Works. Got a different perspective or have a burning opinion to share? Let us know at [email protected].