"But many city jobs in offices, including in Beijing like anywhere else, could actually go full telecommute, I believe." You are thinking like a Western. China

"But many city jobs in offices, including in Beijing like anywhere else, could actually go full telecommute, I believe." You are thinking like a Western. China is different. There is no such a thing like individual good bandwidth Internet connections in China, for a reason: it has to be controlled. In China only companies could have good Internet connections, and even so it has to be controlled in so many ways that it makes them ineffective, inefficient for personal communication. Imagine every single moment of your working life is recorded and stored and could be used against you in the future out of context. Chinese workers tell you personally things that NEVER will tell you on record. There is also the issue of the high ambiguity of Chinese language, the same expression could mean totally different things. Chinese government employs millions of people spying and censoring communications between people. The thing the Chinese government fears the most is people communicating with other people freely, and that is what telecommute really is. I have only worked telecommuting for years now, using mainly video calls. Japan and Korea are great places to do it, but China is not, and probably won't for a long time.