https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n11 … in-beijingthe latest despatch from the beijing diaries of the ex-bureaucrat i've linked here passim. a good insight into just how strict their lockdown was and how extensive their track-and-trace measures. western countries are way, way behind this level of policy (perhaps for good reason).
The Chinese police force couldn’t have singlehandedly enforced the home isolation of 1.4 billion people that started in Wuhan on 23 January and was later extended to other provinces and cities. Beijing has about 35 policemen for every ten thousand inhabitants; Shanghai and Tianjin have 25, while ordinary prefecture-level cities make do with fewer than twenty. Instead, the community residents’ committees, equipped with smartphones and extensive personal data, implemented and regulated the lockdown.
Residential areas are divided into a ‘grid’ of small zones for the purposes of information gathering, population monitoring and management. I had a chance to visit the grid control room of an upscale community some years ago. Viewed on a computer the grid is like a map, with each building assigned to a zone. Technicians randomly clicked on a building and selected a household. The ‘household information’ popped up immediately, including the names, ages, jobs and contact details of everyone living there. A grid member can see whether the family lives in the apartment or rents it out; whether there are children, elderly people or women of childbearing age; whether or not the family qualifies for a subsistence allowance. A click on a communal area reveals how many cameras, bulletin boards and trash cans there are. You can view information about the organisations in the community, including the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) branch, the Communist Youth League branch, the Women’s Federation branch and so on. Managing the epidemic requires exactly the sort of community supervision made possible by the grid.
After the lockdown order was issued in Beijing, mobile technology was used to track people’s movements. Our smartphones became electronic passes. Many city governments developed apps on Alipay or WeChat to assign health status codes: green means ‘nothing abnormal detected’, yellow ‘quarantine at home’ and red ‘quarantine at an approved facility’. A few weeks ago a colleague of mine drove out for a hike in the suburbs of Beijing. He saw no one, but at a mountain pass his phone received a text message: ‘Welcome to Hebei Province!’ When he swiped his phone on arriving home, the entrance machine announced: ‘Your record shows you left Beijing today; please quarantine for 14 days.’ His health code had changed to yellow. A poster at the gates of some communities reads: ‘Take a one-day holiday outside Beijing, stay home in quarantine for two weeks.’
In contrast to the emptiness around us, the community WeChat group we were requested to join was lively. At first people were cautious and reserved (sharing opinions and information is always risky) and most messages in the hundred-strong group were notices and advertisements: ‘Yunnan red-skin potatoes are rotting in the field, buy them to save the farmers’; ‘Sweetest oranges cannot be sold due to the lockdown, cheapest ever prices’; ‘Export deal cancelled, big-brand T-shirts stuck in factory for sale.’ Then, in mid-March, the committee staff reported that a student was coming back to the community from a US high school. The WeChat group exploded.
Residents in the same unit as the student’s family were the first to object. Someone forwarded articles describing how inefficiently foreign countries were dealing with Covid-19 and how rudely overseas students behaved once they returned. ‘Why should we let someone come home from abroad? We have already been isolated at home for two months and this child’s arrival will mean we’ll be in isolation for ever!’ Less friendly comments followed: ‘Didn’t the rich families send their children to the US to enjoy safety and human rights? Why not let them stay there?’ ‘Human rights or human life, they have to choose.’ Usually silent neighbours were eager to express their opinions from behind their online personae. The student returned home. Two weeks passed; he and his family remained healthy. The restrictions on their unit were lifted.
A video widely shared on the internet showed a woman jogging in Beijing the day after she arrived from Australia. She quarrelled with the community staff when they asked her to self-quarantine. The police were called and the following day her employer, Bayer China, sacked her; a few days later she was told to leave China and return to Australia.
Last edited by uziq (2020-06-06 03:05:31)
