China extends “zero-COVID” surveillance methods to protests

China recently eased some of its strict “zero-COVID” policies after unprecedented protests erupted in several parts of the country. For weeks, there were demonstrations against three years of constant PCR testing and reporting, travel restrictions and citywide quarantines, nonstop tracking and surveillance of citizens.

Now, Chinese authorities are deploying some of the same tools they used to limit the spread of COVID-19 to track down demonstrators who have been speaking out against the government in public and online.

Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Marketplace’s China correspondent, Jennifer Pak, who’s been covering this story from Shanghai. Pak gave Adams a quick rundown of how the surveillance is carried out. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Jennifer Pak: Mainly surveillance footage, and also photos that people have been posting online, including ones from the media. And if any protesters or anybody had posted comments about the protests, they had registered their real name and also ID with that particular website, because that’s by law. So all of that can be used. In addition, we believe that phone location data was also used to track some of these protesters. And then, of course, there’s the health QR code. This is something that we have to scan wherever we go. And we’re pretty sure some of that was being used to track down some of the protesters.

Kimberly Adams: Some of this tracking was made possible by the zero-COVID policy. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Pak: Right. So in the last two to three years, every megacity, every province had its own health QR code. And since the Shanghai lockdown in the spring, there were many more layers that were added to it. So in addition to showing whether you’ve been to medium- or high-risk areas, your PCR test results also showed up on it. And this health code can determine so many things in your daily life: whether you can go to the office today, whether you can return home from a business trip or even eat at a restaurant.

Adams: How precise is this system?

Pak: Like all technology, there are bound to be cracks. The only problem in China is that there really isn’t an appeal system. So for example, a friend of a friend was deemed as a close COVID contact because they were at a restaurant that a COVID case had “brushed past.” But when they gave her the date, they realized that actually this person was not at that restaurant. Still, officials made her quarantine at home and put a lock outside her door because they said, “Sorry, that’s what the system says. And if you want your health QR code to be green, this is what you have to do.” The other thing is that a lot of the surveillance is quite broad. So we have heard, for example, back to the protesters, people were being pulled in just by being in the area. So it’s not exactly as precise. And if you think about the fact that, for example, WeChat, which is our main communication tool in China, that’s being monitored by the police, and it’s censored by the platform, any kind of key terms that pop up. Somehow it didn’t avoid any of the protests. And that’s partly because some of the protesters had gone over on the other side of the Great Firewall [China’s internet regulatory system] using encrypted apps like Telegram. They’ve sent videos and pictures on to Twitter to show the world what’s happening. So there are still ways to bypass.

Adams: And this surveillance isn’t just online, right?

Pak: Absolutely not. So we’ve heard from protesters who were detained that they were asked to hand over their phones, name people they were with, and in the following days there were spot checks on the streets. We saw police officers checking people’s phones for photos. So the same goes for the zero-COVID tracking-tracing system. So it doesn’t just involve China’s version of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], but also staff at rail stations, security guards at buildings who have all been given powers beyond anything they’ve ever had before, so they can send people to quarantine. Or even if you’re the Communist neighborhood committee, you can cut off people’s food supply deliveries. And this week, we’re already getting word from China’s government that they’re going to roll back some of this health QR code and also other travel codes related to it. But what we’re trying to indicate is that China’s surveillance system is really effective, not just because of the tech but mainly because of the humans behind it and at every single layer trying to enforce it.

Related links: More insight from Kimberly Adams

Jennifer has been chronicling what zero-COVID has meant for the Chinese economy, its people and her own personal life in her coverage throughout the pandemic and through the recent protests.

And it’s definitely worth checking out her Instagram, where you can see photos of quarantine hotel meals. It’s like a time lapse of a lockdown via food pics.

Meanwhile, Jennifer was talking about the Chinese government easing up on some of its zero-COVID policies including, according to CNN, deactivating a system that tracks people’s movements from city to city to check if they’ve been in an area with an outbreak. That story includes concerns from health experts that China, after enforcing zero-COVID for so long, is massively underprepared for the thousands, or tens of thousands, of daily COVID cases happening now.

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