Digital equivalents of lawsuits, real estate operations, classes and business meetings gain ground in the face of Chinese coronavirus outbreak

Chinese citizens take advantage of the coronavirus outbreak to test digital Civilization.

With more than 60 million people quarantined, online existence is gaining ground in the country, which already has more than 2,000 deaths from the disease that emerged in the city of Wuhan. In China, lawsuits, real estate operations, classes and business meetings are now held on the internet, which is why mobile data use has skyrocketed.
The Shanghai High Court has increased digital trials by 63% in the first weeks of the year – compared to the same period in 2019 – coinciding with the coronavirus alert. This implies that many participants first have to learn how to use the system via telematics, which has caused an additional workload for judicial staff. In other provinces of the country it has also happened, but to a lesser extent.

The Shanghaian court has not only been managing most of its cases online, but is also in charge of staff payments, contacts with judges, increases in potential material evidence and other litigation services, Abacus reported . And, of course, remote trials are being conducted through private video links. Anyone who believed that the coronavirus would save him from a judicial process has been wrong.

Online sale of houses

Digital lawsuits add to school classes and chip business meetings. The Video Conferencing platform Zoom has raised its traffic figures in recent weeks, as companies are taking their workers’ meetings to that stadium. And the “Chinese Youtube”, Youku, has become the classroom of many Chinese students enrolled in schools that remain closed by the coronavirus.
But the market is also finding new ways to keep operating for the duration of quarantine. For example, the real estate sector. Just because there are tens of thousands of confirmed cases of coronavirus in China does not mean that there are no citizens wanting to buy houses or property. The problem is that they can’t go personally to meet with a real estate agent, or close trades in person, but they can go virutal.
At a press conference held online – of course – real estate firm Evergrande reported that, in three days, it sold 47,500 homes on its website and app worth 7.8 billion euros. The company’s application allows interested parties to contact the owners directly, as well as to get to know the houses through virtual reality tours. Evergrande says the app has more than 10 million users.
His case is not isolated: other Chinese real estate giants have celebrated popularity spikes in their digital services and some are even hosting live streams to present real estate projects as if coronavirus did not exist.

Mobile data to the limit

The use of digital platforms in China is usually high, but the coronavirus outbreak has triggered it, and has brought mobile data figures to a new record. Specifically, the Chinese New Year weekend (January 25, when concerns about the epidemic began to increase) there was a 36% increase in internet traffic in China, as citizens are consuming more entertainment and video games online.
The problem is that operators are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with additional mass traffic. And the servers of many of the most popular platforms in the country are experiencing increasingly periodic crashes. The 845 million internet users in China, before the coronavirus, already spent an average of four hours a day connected. Now, with life turned to the virtual world, at least they’ve doubled the average.

ED Economía Digital