"The city, which is a window for the world to observe China, is a pioneer in promoting urban digital transformation. It is also attempting to integrate social resources with the government's administrative resources to facilitate digital urban management, which helps improve governance capability in big cities and ultimately benefits residents," Xu said.

The Shanghai authorities have announced that 100 "innovative scenarios" involving the use of smart systems will be created in the near future to help urban management in office buildings, large supermarkets and commercial complexes.

Fan, the security worker, said that traditionally he and his colleagues had to patrol the Nanjing Building regularly to detect problems, such as bikes being left in front of the gates, boxes blocking fire rescue routes and people smoking outside designated areas.

However, the smart system, along with technological support from Huawei, now plays a big role in such work.

When a problem is detected, a warning signal flashes on a large screen in the district urban operations management center. After a security worker goes to the scene and deals with the incident, the warning is removed.