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Technology
OpinionComment
Nancy Qian
Nancy Qian

Opinion | Working from home a low-cost solution to two of China’s biggest problems: low birth rate and high pollution

  • The Chinese government has been at pains to increase fertility and reduce pollution
  • Raising children in urban China is prohibitively expensive. Telecommuting is a low-cost strategy to address China’s demographic and environmental challenges

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In China, there has been neither a wholesale shift to virtual work nor much discussion of new workplace models for the post-pandemic era. Photo: Bloomberg
Nancy Qian

Before the pandemic, firms and workers around the world used emails and conference calls to reduce communication costs. But a lack of coordination made it difficult to use these technologies fully.

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Firing off an email was easy, but there was no guarantee of when the other person would respond. People were reluctant to break old habits. More broadly, low demand discouraged product development, leaving much to be desired in many workplace apps.

By forcing entire economic sectors into virtual work, the Covid-19 pandemic has resolved many of these earlier coordination problems. Everyone in these sectors has had to invest in new technologies and learn how to use them. Better yet, workplace apps are becoming more user-friendly with every passing week.

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Japanese theme park opens Ferris wheel for remote workers during coronavirus pandemic

Japanese theme park opens Ferris wheel for remote workers during coronavirus pandemic
In the United States, companies such as Google and government agencies such as the Federal Reserve have embraced virtual workplaces and announced that a significant number of their employees will continue to work remotely after the pandemic.
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