Author : Trisha Ray

Expert Speak Raisina Debates
Published on Jul 20, 2022

The Chinese government is misusing the data collected under the pretext of public health interventions to suppress all forms of dissent.

Long COVID: The pandemic's shadow on data and dissent in China

This is the 129th article in the series – The China Chronicles.


At the May meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Xi bore down on the country’s “dynamic clearing” or zero-COVID policy. Despite discontent following lockdowns in Shanghai and elsewhere this year, the Standing Committee pronounced the policy a resounding success, stating that just as they had won the “battle for Wuhan”, they will defend Shanghai as well. Shanghai lockdown’s lasting legacy, however, will be in the simmering dissent it elicited, in the face of a months-long shutdown and food shortages. Residents in the Jing’an district banged pots and pans, some took to their balconies to sing songs of protest (followed by the unforgettable imagery of a drone announcing “Please comply with COVID restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”).

Based on this data, the system would generate a QR code: a green code enabled one to move freely, a yellow code would result in a seven-day quarantine, and a red code would trigger a 14-day quarantine.

The CCP’s pandemic war-footing has not just taken a toll on the people of China, the tools in its COVID arsenal have also provided continued justification for suppressing any form of dissent.

In February 2020, cities in China began implementing a health code system (Jian Kang Ma) to track and control the spread of COVID. Residents would need to register with a national ID and phone number, and furnish answers to questions regarding their travel history and health. Based on this data, the system would generate a QR code: a green code enabled one to move freely, a yellow code would result in a seven-day quarantine, and a red code would trigger a 14-day quarantine. Entry to any public space would require a health code. This kind of digital infrastructure was by no means new, nor unique to China. Centralised platforms have been part of the CCP’s broader agenda for promoting uniform policy and control since the 1990s. In other words, “Jian Kang Ma (JKM) as a social infrastructure coordinates citizens' experiences with the state to produce a desired mode of citizenry for the state.”

The national health QR code system (Source: Technode)

Yet, JKM is unusual in one way: It is embedded within popular apps like WeChat and Alipay, making it both ubiquitous and intrusive. A recent data leak, the largest in China’s history, has also demonstrated the highly porous boundary between private tech companies and the government. An unsecured database maintained by the Shanghai police, leaked online by an anonymous hacker, contained data from external databases, including delivery and payments apps. Ironically, China passed one of the world’s strictest data privacy regimes last year to rein in its tech companies.

Researchers began pointing to the understudied risks of collecting location data early on in the implementation of contact tracing apps. One scholar noted in a May 2020 article, “In light of the COVID-19 pandemic location data might be very useful for epidemiological analysis. In the context of a political crisis, the same location data can threaten the rule of law, democracy, and the enjoyment of human rights.” These fears came to a head in June 2022, when protestors heading toward Henan province found themselves unable to enter the area when their JKM codes turned red, declaring them a health risk. The protestors had taken to the streets to demand the security of their deposits, held by four rural banks in Henan and frozen by the nation’s central bank as part of ongoing investigations.  Experts and ordinary citizens alike have expressed distaste at this blatant abuse of power: “If the health code’s purpose for epidemic prevention is extended to other aspects, or even evolves into a 'social stability maintenance code', it will first violate the legitimacy of the purpose of the health code itself and violate the law”.

Experts and ordinary citizens alike have expressed distaste at this blatant abuse of power: “If the health code’s purpose for epidemic prevention is extended to other aspects, or even evolves into a 'social stability maintenance code', it will first violate the legitimacy of the purpose of the health code itself and violate the law”.

Social stability and “common prosperity” remain central tenets of Xi Jinping’s CCP, as he heads into a likely third term in power. The country’s personal information protection and data security laws should hold the authorities of Henan and Shanghai accountable for the false health codes and the massive data leak, yet the quiet censorship the central government has been engaging in to suppress critical views indicates, at best, that these issues are being sidelined to ensure Xi’s re-election, and at worst, that the state is not accountable to its own laws and standards. This case is also a dire warning regarding the necessity of limiting the duration and use cases of massive government enterprises in data collection at the very outset, lest they provide justification in perpetuity for suppression. China’s lengthy lockdowns, and a spate of controversies on the state machinery’s mismanagement and misuse of data have raised the question: Stability at what cost?

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Author

Trisha Ray

Trisha Ray

Trisha Ray is an associate director and resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. Her research interests lie in geopolitical and security trends in ...

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