China's technology is too advanced and they're always open to adopt the latest technology method. Facial recognition payment could assure the security of each transaction. However, I'm still sure that there will be lapses and errors using this method. I would still prefer the usual way of payment. I believe that this kind of method would be more popular and other countries would also implement it.
It's great to see innovations but having facial recognition for something that should be secure such as payment should have a robust way of recognizing different faces. Faces in China are quite similar to each other and I beleive it can be exploited even with the use of 3D map sensors. Fingerprint is more secure and more difficult to duplicate than faces when faces can have similarities, especially when twins. However, in your argument that the Chinese government adds it for their surveillance, it's no different from other big companies, social media platforms, or other governments.
That really depends on your views of China. I think all the recent changes and advances they've made are all very slow and controlled, with the government or the company (usually Wechat) having all of the power and being able to do as they so, please. It's one of the reasons why BTC was fully banned from their system, and it's why they are developing their own
centralized cryptocurrency.
As for the smile to pay technology, I believe you can easily set limits on how much money you can pay via it, and its facial recognition is really good compared to other examples we see, and since you need to do a movement to confirm the payment, it's even safer.
