The Economist 29Feb2020

24 TheEconomistFebruary 29th 2020

1

W

hen the covid-19 virus started

spreading in China, and the govern-

ment began locking down the country,

Shen Dacheng’s friends called her a pro-

phet. Her short story “Miss Box Man”, pub-

lished in 2018, is set in a world of virus-in-

duced fear. The rich live in sealed con-

tainers which protect them from the

pathogen. For the rest, life is a constant se-

ries of compulsory blood tests and hos-

ings-down with disinfectant. Those found

with the virus are seized. Some are killed

on the spot. Sensors are hidden every-

where, looking out for carriers.

China’s non-fictional epidemic has ech-

oes of that dystopia, minus the caskets and

the killings. Take Ms Sun, who lives with

her son and husband in the eastern city of

Hangzhou. The city’s health-check app

flagged her as a possible carrier of the virus

after she reported a runny nose through its

self-assessment form. She had just re-

turned from her native province in the

north-west, where she had met people

from Hubei, the province at the centre of

the outbreak that has infected more than

65,000 people in China and killed about

2,600 others since December.

The red colour of the qrcode on Ms

Sun’s “Hangzhou Health Code” app indi-

cated that she was supposed to be undergo-

ing 14 days of self-quarantine. Had the code

been yellow, it would have meant she was a

lower risk and had to isolate herself for sev-

en days. For free passage around the city,

people must produce their phones at

checkpoints and show they have a green qr

code. Pictured is another method of keep-

ing tabs on people: drivers have to scan the

code held up by a drone to register for entry

into the city, in this case Shenzhen.

Ms Sun’s app did not offer her a chance

to explain that she has chronic rhinitis, a

common nasal condition. Only after an ap-

peal to the local government and a visit

from neighbourhood officials was her red

status changed to green, allowing her to

move around Hangzhou again.

Much of China’s success so far in con-

taining the virus’s spread outside Hubei

has depended on mobilising legions of

people to man checkpoints armed with

clipboards and thermometer guns, or to go

door-to-door making note of sniffles. But

as the daily number of newly confirmed

cases of covid-19 continues to fall in China,

and the government struggles to get the

economy going again after more than a

month of paralysis, officials will rely more

heavily on surveillance technology to pre-

vent a resurgence of the virus. It will enable

them to adopt a more tailored approach, al-

lowing most people to resume their nor-

mal lives while monitoring those who

might be infected.

Smartphones, which are carried by

most working-age Chinese, will be power-

ful tools. They are already used extensively

by police to track people’s movements and

monitor their online behaviour. Covid-19

offers the government an incentive and an

excuse to exploit their capabilities more

fully, this time in pursuit of data that could

help the clipboard-carriers identify their

targets. As other countries worry about a

possible pandemic of covid-19, they will

watch China to see whether its digital

snooping can provide lessons in how to

control the virus’s spread.

It is often assumed that the surveillance

systems used by China’s security services

are highly integrated and offer an abun-

Surveillance technology

Code red

China is using its high-tech methods of controlling people to curb an epidemic

China

25 Onlineclassrooms

26 Chaguan: Emotional decoupling

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