Murderer on the run in China turns himself in because he doesn’t have a health code

Color-based QR codes are meant to indicate the health status of smartphone users, but it makes life difficult for people without smartphones to get around... like a fugitive on the run

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A woman has her temperature taken as others use smartphones to scan a code required to prove their health and travel status before being allowed to enter a shopping mall in Beijing on May 2. (Picture: AFP)

Published: 4:33pm, 5 May 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

One tool in China’s fight against the spread of the coronavirus is a color-based QR code system that helps track people by determining where they can go. But now police have found that the system might have other unintended benefits.

This week, a man surnamed Shi showed up at a police station in the eastern city of Hangzhou and said he wanted to turn himself in, according to local media. The report says that when asked what he did, Shi broke down crying and told the police that he had been on the run after killing a fellow villager in 1996.

So why give in now? Turns out that he doesn’t use a smartphone, meaning he doesn’t have a health code. Without being able to show the code that’s generated within a smartphone app, Shi reportedly wasn’t able to come and go from many places as he pleased and couldn’t find a place to live.

Health codes are a type of QR code mainly generated in mini programs within WeChat and Alipay, apps that nearly all smartphone users in China have. Chinese citizens are assigned green, yellow or red codes that are meant to indicate their risks of being infected with the coronavirus.

(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, whose affiliate Ant Financial operates Alipay.)