To have a coffee delivered to an office in Shanghai, simply ask one of China’s artificial-intelligence(人工智能) super-apps(超级应用) to choose a brew(选择一杯咖啡) on your behalf(代表你), press “confirm” and the beverage will be on its way. Delegating(委托，授权) such important decisions brings risks, of course. When your correspondent asked one popular AI app to deliver a “special coffee”, he received a rose-petal-vinegar-flavoured(玫瑰花瓣醋味的) one.
在上海，要让咖啡送到办公室，只需让中国的人工智能超级应用替你选一杯，点击“确认”，饮料就会上路。当然，将如此重要的决定委托出去也有风险。当本刊记者让一款流行的AI应用送一杯“特色咖啡”时，他收到了一杯玫瑰花瓣醋味的咖啡。
Nevertheless, the pace with which such services are being adopted in China is remarkable. Already more than 600m of its people are thought to have used some form of so-called agentic(代理的，自主的) app. China is speeding towards a future in which AI chooses, purchases and delivers many of the goods and services people consume, upending(颠覆，彻底改变) its digital economy in the process.
尽管如此，此类服务在中国的普及速度令人瞩目。据信已有超过6亿人使用过某种形式的所谓代理应用。中国正飞速走向一个由AI选择、购买和配送人们消费的许多商品和服务的未来，并在此过程中颠覆其数字经济。
Chinese netizens(网民) have so far lived through two distinct internet eras. From the early 2000s most turned to Baidu, a search engine, as their window to the web. When Google was forced to exit the country at the end of the decade, Baidu, in effect(实际上，实质上), became a monopoly. But as it sought to monetise(变现，盈利化) its service more aggressively, ad-driven recommendations took over, frustrating users. That brought a backlash(强烈反对，反弹) against web-based search and, thanks to the spread of the smartphone, pushed China into a second internet era dominated by mobile super-apps that combine functions such as shopping, entertainment, communication and payments.
中国网民迄今经历了两个截然不同的互联网时代。从21世纪初开始，大多数人以搜索引擎百度作为上网窗口。当谷歌在十年末被迫退出中国时，百度实际上成了垄断者。但百度更积极地寻求服务变现，广告驱动的推荐取代一切，令用户沮丧。这引发了基于网页搜索的反弹，并且由于智能手机普及，将中国推入第二个互联网时代，由集购物、娱乐、通讯和支付等功能于一体的移动超级应用主导。