“Everyone who respects the rules makes the community a better place to live.”
That was the cell phone message that I and everyone else within a hundred yards received after a guard saw me crossing out of the crosswalk. Talking with friends, I discovered that the traffic wardens have a device that sends automatic messages to the nearest cell tower, in order to remind the population that following the rules is creating a “sophisticated civilization”.
Shanghai is a city of the 21st century, or rather the 22nd century, for better or for worse. The most impressive thing is that the area where I live, Pudong, has gone straight from the countryside to the technological frontier, without facing the urban problems of most cities of the last century.
While Brazilians are getting used to Pix, here we have been using something similar for over ten years. Most of my acquaintances don’t even use a wallet anymore — it’s all integrated into the cell phone. Subway, buses, train tickets, Covid test codes and online shopping? There’s always an app for that.
Taxi drivers don’t even look at passengers on the streets anymore. To pick up a bike off the street, it takes me seconds to unlock it by scanning a barcode, and I return it almost anywhere.
If this is true in everyday life, it is even more true in the fight against Covid. Before each test, you must register in the Health Cloud app. All the results of the last 20 exams in the last 20 days are there.
The history of vaccines too. I can consult by videoconference with a doctor who will prescribe the drug through an electronic system. The clinic’s pharmacy will send the controlled medicine via delivery, and, from the appointment until the drug arrives at home, it can take 15 minutes.
Before the pandemic, buying things online was so easy that we were even surprised if any order took more than 48 hours to be delivered, wherever it came from in China.
So is it any surprise that some districts are using drones and robots to try to maintain order in a city of millions whose frustration grows daily? Not. The issue is not the use of robots, but the fact that Shanghai did not have large quantities of such tools. After this Covid wave, the number of drone purchases by local authorities will skyrocket.
More impressive than the sporadic use of drones — and dog-shaped robots — is the fleet of autonomous vehicles that Mei Tuan, the biggest restaurant delivery company, is putting on the road. After all, at the moment, less than 20% of truck drivers and delivery men are driving around the city.
Authorities also have more than 1 million security cameras installed across the city, in case anyone is caught breaking the rules. In Shanghai, there are 158 cameras per square kilometer, just under a third of the number in London, 442, but 56 times more than in São Paulo, 3.
There is a mistaken view of social control in China. The government does not have the resources, financial or technological, for any kind of real-time control. Censorship exists and is strong, but most of the time it is done in a crude way, deleting comments and posts seen as “dangerous” or “sensitive”.
The Shanghai government had to create an official channel to counter the fake news that is multiplying on social media. After all, when there is no free press, there is no shortage of informal channels for people to communicate. Living in Shanghai is experiencing the future. Again, for better or worse. We still lack the flying cars that science fiction books promised us in the last century.
But, for the rest, it doesn’t take much.
