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Illustration: Perry Tse

China’s Covid-19 health code: algorithms weigh on lives and freedoms, leaving some confused and miserable

  • China’s health code app is a key resource for the country’s governments to track and contain Covid-19 cases using time, location and personal interactions
  • Tension comes from Chinese people being wrongly flagged as virus risks and officials who do not want to miss any cases for fear of outbreak or being sacked

When Beijing resident William Wei tried to go for a run with his wife at the Olympic Green last month, he could not enter the park.

He was scanning the health QR code at the entrance – a routine measure to ensure all entrants are coronavirus-free – when a pop-up appeared on his phone stating he might have crossed paths with someone at risk of catching the virus, or that he had possibly travelled through a risky area.

It recommended he check in at once with his community staff for “risk elimination” measures, such as taking a nucleic acid test. “If the outbreak spreads [because of you], you might be legally responsible,” the notification said.

Wei cancelled his plans and followed the instructions on the screen. After signing forms to declare where he had been in the previous few weeks and taking a nucleic acid test, his status on the health code app returned to normal.

He had no idea why he was flagged as a risk: at the time Beijing had very few reported cases, Wei said, and the most recent trip he had taken was to Guangzhou a month before – also a low-risk city at the time.

“We’ve pretty much got used to it,” Wei said of the hassle. “Nowadays, we have to record every single bit of our route, because wherever you go you are required to scan a code.”

02:15

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As China enters the third year of the pandemic, with the highly contagious Omicron variant rapidly spreading and an exponential rise in daily asymptomatic infections, the country is increasingly focusing its resources on precisely identifying cases to limit the economic cost of mass restrictions, such as citywide screenings and lockdowns.

Accurate contact tracing and risk prediction relies heavily on people voluntarily reporting their whereabouts and on Big Data, particularly through the health code mobile phone app which is used across the country.

The health code, which indicates a person’s Covid-19 status via an app requiring real-name registration, is essential in mainland China and must be shown to enter venues or travel.

But there have been concerns about what users deem inaccurate calculations about their risk, and policies vary by degrees across cities, leaving people at the mercy of impenetrable algorithms. Many report being suddenly flagged as a risk without explanation, leaving them confused, shunned and sometimes stranded.

In Beijing, those who are considered “safe” have few restrictions on their movements, but anyone deemed to have been exposed to any risk of the virus would see a pop-up appear on the app when they scan the code, as Wei experienced, blocking them from entering venues or leaving the city.

Even actions such as buying painkillers or medication for fever in the city can get a resident flagged on the app as a risk.

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Elsewhere in the country, the QR health codes generally follow a traffic-light system, with the colours hugely affecting where residents can go and how they are treated: a green code declares you have not been exposed to any potential cases or risky areas, while yellow and red codes render you somewhat of a social pariah.

This writer experienced it first hand last month, after leaving Shenzhen to visit a friend in neighbouring Jiangxi province.

Soon after arriving, Shenzhen announced an abrupt lockdown, making it a “risky zone”. Even though I had left the city before the announcement, my health code turned from green to yellow.

Suddenly, I found myself an unpopular guest in town. Until I could redeem myself by showing negative test results, I could not go anywhere or buy anything.

Starbucks staff politely told me I could not step inside, taxi drivers looked at me cautiously and a security guard at a residential compound did a double take when seeing my code.

“Why am I a little afraid of you now?” he said.

In the past week, I have also received dozens of phone calls from police bureaus across China, some from cities I have never been to, checking my whereabouts and whether I’ve been screened and vaccinated.

“Big Data pushed your information our way, so we’re obliged to check it out,” a police officer said after finding out I had never set foot in that city. “But a lot of the information is quite random.”

03:20

Hong Kong picnic group created to bypass Covid-19 tracking app

Hong Kong picnic group created to bypass Covid-19 tracking app

A software developer who helped design the health code said the program tracked three elements to determine a person’s risk of exposure to the virus: time, location and personal interactions.

The data mainly came from local police departments, which showed the location and time a person passed through mobile phone base stations. The app also collects data from local health commissions, deciding which areas are “risky” and whether an individual has been in a risky zone, for how long and whether they crossed paths with a confirmed case within a critical period.

“After this analysis, we can make sure there’s pretty much no potential case left out in big cities,” said the developer, who declined to be named.

Furthermore, the health code developer said that even though algorithms for the health codes were similar, each government decided how strictly information would be applied. For example, in some cities you might be counted as a close contact if you stay in risky zones for 20 minutes, but in others it is fine to stay up to a day without being deemed a risk, he said.

Arbitrary application of rules by governments is common. In November, Ningxia Daily reported that to prevent the risk of spreading disease, the government of Yinchuan in northwestern China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region gave more than 180,000 people the yellow code. It led to waves of complaints about the inconvenience caused in people’s daily lives. Soon after, the city turned two-thirds of people’s codes back to green, and said anyone else who thought they were wrongly labelled could appeal.

People have discussed creative ways of evading the system, such as pulling out one’s mobile phone sim card or registering your health code with a different phone number, so your real movements are not automatically detected. However, there are legal consequences if individuals catch or spread the virus.

Multiple cities have announced that under pandemic control policies, individuals could be punished for lying about their whereabouts or travel records during contact tracing.

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As early as 2020, Hangzhou issued warnings, fines and detention for nine people who lied about their travel records or tried to escape quarantine. Their names were openly displayed on government sites and their social credit system was marked for a year, which could make it difficult for them to board planes and trains, to get a loan or buy a house.

There is a human override option in this elaborately designed machine, but as the developer said, appeal processes vary from city to city.

Hangzhou-based public relations expert Liu Ling found last month her health code had turned yellow after she returned from a trip to southern Sanya in Hainan province. She was not allowed back into her residential compound and had to take a coronavirus test. She called her community staff to explain the situation – that she had been to Sanya where there were few infections and low risk – and a few minutes later it was resolved.

For others, it is more complicated. In Jiangxi, I had to follow a rigid system of seven days of quarantine at home and took two tests before I could appeal online. No matter how many phone calls I made to the city’s various government offices, I received the same answer: there was no other way.

Faced with legion requests from the public to turn their codes back to green, local governments and official media have published articles outlining in detail what steps to follow.

“Woke up in the morning to find your code red or yellow? Don’t panic! We can teach you how to appeal”, one December article on the official People’s Daily read. At that time, the eastern city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province was dealing with a regional outbreak.

The article quoted Hangzhou’s health commission as saying inconvenient restrictions and sudden changes in health codes had made many people anxious but “too much attention on the matter would increase one’s panic”.

It suggested that the public should become familiar with Covid-related restrictions, not believe in rumours, keep a regular diet and exercise and maintain communication with friends to ease this stress.

01:43

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The Covid-19 passport implanted in your skin using this NFC-enabled microchip

As much trouble as it brought the public, the system was unlikely to be scrapped, said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Wu said the Chinese government’s main focus was to ensure no potential cases slipped through the cracks and it would be carried out using a “top-down” approach.

In many cities, officials did not want to lose sight of any potential cases, even if it meant extra work.

In the last month alone, more than 70 officials across China have been sacked or disciplined over their handling of outbreaks, spurring some to take drastic action once cases began to increase for fear of disciplinary punishment.

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A central issue, Wu said, was “whether they have a sufficient legal framework to protect privacy and individual rights”.

For the general public, there is little to do but wish their codes do not change and avoid any unnecessary travel.

As a popular saying on China’s internet goes: “My stocks cannot go green, but my health code must.”

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