Coronavirus and Business: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

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DELIVERY TECHNOLOGY IS KEEPING CHINESE CITIES AFLOAT THROUGH CORONAVIRUS

by Chengyi Lin

For the last month, China’s cities, with their empty streets and deserted shopping malls, have looked like the set of a post-apocalypse TV series. It may be a glimpse of the future for Europe and North America, where lockdowns are quickly expanding.

Public discourse in Europe and the U.S. is predictably focused on how bad things will get and the practicalities of life under lockdown: How will people get food supplies? Can the medical services cope? Will people get paid?

But even at this stage in the lifecycle of the Covid-19 pandemic, some lessons are already emerging from China about how we can cope with the social and commercial disruption of this ...