The legacy of coronavirus in China? A more invasive state machinery and increased public monitoring

At least for the time being, the surveillance state looks stronger than it did before the outbreak

For the Chinese Communist Party, the shift online by the vast majority of its citizens over the last decade has been the gift that keeps on giving. Once upon a time, the inner lives of its own people were as much as enigma to it as the outside world. Now they are increasingly available for scrutiny, correction, and in some cases, punishment.

The use of vast amounts of surveillance in the Xinjiang region of north west China is the climax of this. Almost nothing could happen, and no one could move, without the potential of being observed, and, where it was deemed appropriate, intervention taking place.

With the onset of the coronavirus earlier this year, such technology spread across many other areas of the country where it had never been seen in before. The justification for this was a national crisis, with the public able to grasp the reasons for the action. Movements have been monitored, and information about people’s health and their personal lives scrutinised with far more intensity. Ways of detecting potential health risks from individuals using face recognition have been experimented with.

All of this has been done under the guise of government care for its own people. This is perfectly understandable. But as ever, the simple fact is that this particular government, at this particular time, has a strong interest in things beyond pure public welfare. It also wants to exercise control and look after its own stability and power.

The line between guarding social welfare, and something more overtly political, is a very hard one to inscribe neatly. You can, of course, do both at the same time, and the Communist Party, in particularly, has no qualms in saying that its good is the public good, and the two are intrinsically linked. But the current levels of concern and anxiety is also an opportunity to the government. And its mindset is one where nothing can be left to chance, and everything has to be controlled. The current acceptance of deployment of such comprehensive surveillance measures is likely something too tempting for the government too turn its back on. Is it therefore here to stay?

It might be that Beijing can create a sense of almost perpetual crisis from what has happened recently, and use that as justification for the continuation of the current suite of practices. One never knows when the next health crisis might come along, and perhaps these will be the best way of safeguarding against it.

To what extent Chinese people themselves will be comfortable with this is an unknown question. Most of the younger generation are as unhappy as people anywhere else with the way that the state can insert itself into the most intimate areas of their life. The problem is that they are as addicted to the benefits they get from their use of social media, smart phones and apps too – perhaps more so. Living with the tension between privacy and carrying on their lives with the knowledge most of it is visible will be the most likely arrangement – for the time being at least.

However, China has revealed itself as a place of deep anxiety and profound pockets of distrust in the last few months as the virus has spread. These can mutate to forms of opposition and public discontent at the government that may well become politically threatening to the current administration.

But at least for the time being the surveillance state looks stronger than it did last year. And it looks like the legacy of coronavirus in China, like it or not, will be an era where the state will be inside people’s lives more than ever before.

Kerry Brown is an associate fellow on the Asia Pacific Programme at Chatham House, and professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College, London