China’s future economic potential hinges on its productivity
Can the government boost it?
NOBLELIFT, BASED in Changxing, a town on the banks of Tai Lake, provides robotic tools for warehouse management: self-driving pallet jacks and sorting systems that make picking and fetching quicker and less dependent on humans. The factories in which it builds its wares are themselves a blur of robot arms. “There’s no comparison with the way things used to be,” says Ding Yi, Noblelift’s founder. The company’s main factory has only 350 workers. He says that in the old days it would have needed nearly four times as many.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Automatic for the people”
Briefing August 14th 2021
From the August 14th 2021 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Briefing
The right in Congress and the courts will reshape Donald Trump’s agenda
As dominant as the new president is, there is still life in Washington’s institutions
How far will Donald Trump go to get rid of illegal immigrants?
It is his signature policy, but the obstacles are daunting
Young customers in developing countries propel a boom in plastic surgery
Falling costs and converging beauty standards spur new habits
The Assad regime’s fall voids many of the Middle East’s old certainties
What if Syria abandoned its hostility to the West and stopped menacing Israel?
Syria has exchanged a vile dictator for an uncertain future
It is not clear how stable or how benign the new regime will be
Gambling is growing like gangbusters in America
Technology and legal changes are spurring a betting bonanza