Social security

China's technology revolution is leaving its senior citizens behind

Zhang Zhixia is sitting in a black metal chair, flipping through handouts about telecom fraud prevention with her reading glasses on. She is back in class after leaving school almost five decades ago.

The 62-year-old former Beijing kindergarten teacher is all ears. She is determined not to be left behind by China's technology revolution.

In Zhang's lifetime, China has gone from an economic backwater to one of the world's largest economies, with a population that has, for a large part, embraced the rapid pace of technological change.

There are already 890 million users of mobile phone payment apps across China, for example. In urban China, many people have gone almost completely cashless, at a faster pace than many more advanced economies.

Everything from coffees to cars can be purchased with a simple tap on the mobile screen. But that has left some elderly people feeling left behind.

Every week, Zhang attends "cell phone classes" run by a volunteer group, See Young, in Panzhuang, an area of Soviet-style residential compounds in northwestern Beijing...