Even an elderly woman who doesn’t know how to use a smartphone and doesn’t watch TV is constantly feeding data into this network by turning lights on and off, using the toilet or turning on the stove. ‘With this eye of wisdom,’ Li gestured to the building around us, ‘everyone will be looked after.’

Every financial transaction made, every unit of electricity and litre of water consumed, every traffic infringement or illegal bit of parking, every blown-down tree, every overflowing rubbish bin or broken streetlamp is recorded and compiled in a central data facility: Xiong’an New Area’s Computing Centre.

When we explain how the city works to visitors, we always tell them this story. An eighty-year-old lady who lived alone was not in good health. One day, the water meter, electricity meter and gas meter in the old lady’s apartment hadn’t moved for 24 hours. The computing platform sent an alert to our staff, who contacted the local grid worker to kno... See more