They’re not leapfrogging us — they’re screwing their own people into accepting a prison society. With the authoritarian instincts in the US and our nasty habit of mass incarceration, no thanks to more surveillance.
This is also happening mostly in large Chinese cities. Rural areas/smaller cities are slower to adopt. Maybe we should thank G-d (haha) for the rural, armed Bible-thumping “mark of the beast” crowd in the US, who’d literally start a holy war if the government tried to force a cashless society.