I was speaking to a chinese friend and what he said made me wonder why the fuss over bitcoins.

In china their ebay-like website Taobao uses a service called Alipay that offers an instant, free, escrow-based transaction service.
-it's faster than bitcoins (instant)
-it's cheaper than bitcions (completely free, unless you use it a lot, similar to clearcoin)
-it's easier than bitcions to buy/sell

The only benefit I see with bitcoins is that the transactions can be anonymous. Also perhaps the fact that the currency is limited and controlled by a group rather than a government...

So that leaves me with two questions..
1.) why does the 'western' world seem so far behind?
2.) if this becomes the norm, what would it mean for bitcoins?