Publications

Weather extremes, failures in global supply chains, dangers through digitized processes and systems. Phenomena like these will increasingly threaten the functionality of a city. This vulnerability will lead to a higher probability for cities not to be able to hold their promise of economic and social advancement. The establishment of resilience is therefore crucial for risk minimisation and quick recovery from shocks.

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a global health crisis the world has not witnessed within a century – since the “Spanish Flue” pandemic of 1919. Unlike 1919, when many governments were still busy dealing with the aftermaths of World War I, the COVID-19 pandemic was met with considerable counter-measures across the world.

What is the actual impact of increased automatisation in the manufacturing sector? This study looks at several automotive supplier firms in South China and their workers in an attempt to find out. While there have not been dramatic job losses so far, and although workers often welcome higher automatisation during the gradual transformation of their workplace, problems emerge that are contributing to an increasingly unbalanced worker-employer…

Outlook on China’s industrial development and the impact of digitalisation and automation on employment.

Taobao, a subsidiary to the biggest Chinese e-commerce player Alibaba, is a Chinese online shopping website and platform with over 580 million monthly active users in 2018.

At the conference "Intelligent Manufacturing and Work 4.0 - Challenges and Perspectives in China, South-East Asia and Germany", the ongoing global technology-driven industrial and platform-based revolution was discussed by experts from industry, trade unions and academia from Asia, Europe and the United States. The results of the debates are summed up in this discussion paper which was jointly authored by the Shanghai Representative Office and…