Can China use artificial intelligence to perfect central planning?

This is part of a Globe and Mail series in which Beijing correspondent Nathan VanderKlippe looks at China's present and future challenges before his return to Canada. The people tapping on keyboards at Liang Zhi Data Technology possess an unusual set of skills. Some have backgrounds in artificial intelligence, a skill set that has grown common across the Chinese high-tech companies. They are experts in economics, and their work at Liang Zhi is to find new ways of making decisions from data. Mr. Shao stands at the forefront of a bid to bring authoritarian capital – the Chinese economic model – into the supercomputer age.