China's buildings are monitoring how people shop, invest, cook and steal

The Huiyun technology now tracks conditions in about 280 Wanda Plazas across China, using more than 10,000 sensors in each of them

Fintech is changing the way people borrow, invest and pay for things. But there’s another type of technology — most noticeably in China — that’s altering the way urban dwellers interact with their living and shopping environments. It’s property technology, or proptech — the use of new technologies like big data and machine learning to help individuals and companies buy, sell and manage real estate.

According to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc, investment into proptech startups from 2013 to 2017 totalled $7.8 billion, with China accounting for about 36 per cent of that. In 2018, that figure came to almost $20 billion,