Abstract
China has insisted on a zero-Covid policy for almost three years, deploying many disciplinary containment measures and surveillance tools. This chapter examines a surveillance tool called the “venue code” which is claimed to improve contact tracing of Covid outbreaks. My research is based on ethnography and discourse analysis of online textual and visual materials, capturing the integration of the venue code into China’s Covid containment regime. I analyze four aspects of the practice: bureaucratic structures, integration, spatial (re)organization, and technologies. I argue that the venue code mediates residents’ experience of cities and restricts urban mobility through the introduction of physical and digital infrastructure, while granting local actors more power. By doing so, this study draws attention to the ways in which the responsibility for achieving the zero Covid objective was shifted onto local actors and Chinese citizens, and state presence in communities and despotic power were strengthened.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Andrejevic M (2007) Surveillance in the digital enclosure. Commun Rev 10(4):295–317
Bach J (2010) “They come in peasants and leave citizens”: urban villages and the making of Shenzhen China. Cult Anthropol 25(3):421–458
Bach J (2019) The red and the black: China’s social credit experiment as a total test environment. Br J Sociol 71:489–502
Bartz D, Alper A (2022) U.S. bans new Huawei, ZTE equipment sales, citing national security risk. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-bans-equipment-sales-imports-zte-huawei-over-national-security-risk-2022-11-25/. Accessed 25 Dec 2022
Batke J, Ohlberg M (2020) State of surveillance. https://www.chinafile.com/state-surveillance-china. Accessed 10 Jul 2022
Beijing Evening News (2022) Beijing: one code for each venue and entry, guarantee accurate information for code scanner. https://weibo.com/1703371307/Ly960aoRh?type=repost. Accessed 10 Jul 2022
Berg B (2009) A Dramaturgical Look at Interviewing. In: Qualitative research methods for the social sciences. Allyn & Bacon, Boston, pp 101–157
Bray D (2005) Danwei space. In: Bray D (ed) Social space and governance in urban China: the danwei system from origins to reform. Stanford University Press, pp 123–156
Bray D (2009) Building ‘community’: new strategies of governance in urban China. In: Jeffreys E (ed) China's governmentalities. Routledge, pp 100–118
Byler D (2021) Terror capitalism: Uyghur dispossession and masculinity in a Chinese city. Duke University Press
Chen H, Greitens SC (2022) Information capacity and social order: The local politics of information integration in China. Governance 35(2):497–523
Chen X (2020) Spaces of care and resistance in China: public engagement during the COVID-19 outbreak. Eurasian Geogr Econ 61(4–5):435–447
Chen X, Oakes T (2023) Time-space companions: digital surveillance, social management, and abuse of power during the Covid-19 pandemic in China. Crit Asian Stud 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2023.2191248
Chen Y, Mao Z, Qiu JL (2018) Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese society. Emerald Group Publishing
Chen Y, Qiu JL (2019) Digital utility: Datafication, regulation, labor, and DiDi’s platformization of urban transport in China. Chin J Commun 12(3):274–289
Chin J, Lin L (2022) Surveillance state: inside China's quest to launch a New Era of Social Control. St. Martin's Press
Chu JY (2014) When infrastructures attack: The workings of disrepair in China. Am Ethnol 41(2):351–367
Datong Health Commission (2022) Authority response comes: Can the venue code replace the health code and Tonglu Tong? http://www.dt.gov.cn/dt12345/rxdt1/202204/654428a3ae9a4e67b4988ba1684988e9.shtml. Accessed 10 Jul 2022.
Erie M, Streinz T (2021) The Beijing effect: China’s ‘Digital Silk Road’ as transnational data governance. N Y Univ J Int Law Politics 54:1. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3810256
Evans B (2023) China’s government is buying Alibaba and Tencent shares that give the Communist Party special rights over certain business decisions, report says. Yahoo Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-government-buying-alibaba-tencent-165617215.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACbpKgqBiUSdqs8NbG9QWf4uG0t-Q18heIxPlwLfW3J9G8lIFMQua7THrv8lDDry-7bpbIidM2AMZnBkYXYOvkOcQxFcMbpy82mZLjjs7gHhcYmyCNTl5-NUVRmsGhi5oTtFLFTvEp41kEt20ipQlFqC3ghU-h_8ywVTfYSd-v30]. Accessed 29 Jan 2023.
Gan N (2022) China’s bank run victims planned to protest. Then their Covid health codes turned red. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/15/china/china-zhengzhou-bank-fraud-health-code-protest-intl-hnk/index.html. Accessed 15 Jul 2022
Gandy O (1993) The panoptic sort: a political economy of personal information. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Gao Y, Cartier C (2022) The grid process: spatializing local governance in China. Eurasian Geogr Econ:1–26
Giddens A (1987) Social theory and modern sociology. Stanford University Press
Hamama B, Liu J (2020) What is beyond the edges? Gated communities and their role in China’s desire for harmonious cities. City, Territory and Architecture 7(1):1–12
Herbert S (2000) For ethnography. Prog Hum Geogr 24(4)
Herzfeld M (1993) The social production of indifference: exploring the symbolic roots of Western Bureaucracy. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
Hoffman S (2019) China’s Tech-Enhanced Authoritarianism. Testimony before House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Hearing on “China’s Digital Authoritarianism: Surveillance, Influence, and Political Control”. https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/109462/witnesses/HHRG-116-IG00-Wstate-HoffmanS-20190516.pdf. Accessed 10 Jul 2022.
Huang J, Tsai KS (2022) Securing authoritarian capitalism in the digital age: the political economy of surveillance in China. China J 88(1):2–28
Kharpal A (2022) China’s next regulatory target—algorithms, the secret of many tech giants’ success. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/china-to-regulate-tech-giants-algorithms-in-unprecedented-move.html. Accessed 29 Jan 2023
Lam T (2021) The people’s algorithms: social credits and the rise of China’s big (br)other. In: Mennicken A, Salais R (eds) The new politics of numbers: Utopia, evidence and democracy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 71–95
Lees L (2004) Urban geography: discourse analysis and urban research. Prog Hum Geogr 28(1):101–107
Liang F (2020) COVID-19 and health code: how digital platforms tackle the pandemic in China. Soc Media + Soc 6(3):2056305120947657
Liang X (2022) Chinese migrant workers protest amid Covid-19 lockdowns in Guangzhou textile hub. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3199725/chinese-migrant-workers-protest-amid-covid-19-lockdowns-guangzhou-textile-hub. Accessed 16 November 2022
Lieberthal K, Oksenberg M (2020) Policy making in China. Princeton Univ, Press
Livingston J (2012) Improvising medicine: an African oncology ward in an emerging cancer epidemic. Duke University Press
Lukács G (2020) Invisibility by design: women and labor in Japan's digital economy. Duke University Press
Mann M (1984) The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results. Eur J Sociol/Arch Eur Sociol 25(2):185–213
Mittelstaedt JC (2021) The grid management system in contemporary China: grass-roots governance in social surveillance and service provision. China Information
Neuendorf KA (2017) The content analysis guidebook. Sage
Ng T (2022) Four injured in knife attack at Shanghai hospital. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3184731/four-injured-knife-attack-115-year-old-shanghai-hospital. Accessed 10 Jul 2022
Qiu JL (2016) Social media on the picket line. Media Cult Soc 38(4):619–633
Qiu JL, Bu W (2013) China ICT studies: a review of the field, 1989–2012. China Rev 13(2):123–152
Stevens H, Haines MB (2020) Tracetogether: Pandemic Response, Democracy, and Technology. East Asian Sci, Technol Soc: Int J 14(3):523–532
Su Z, Xu X, Cao X (2021) What explains popular support for government monitoring in China? J Inf Technol Polit
Suzhou Daily (2022) “The venue code” secures pandemic prevention. https://www.suzhou.gov.cn/szsrmzf/szyw/202204/fe697358802143a29716b3e659178ea8.shtml. Accessed 10 Jul 2022.
Tang B (2018) Deliberation and governance in Chinese middle-class neighborhoods. Jpn J Polit Sci 19(4):663–677
Tang B (2020) Grid governance in China’s urban middle-class neighborhoods. China Q 241:43–61
Tarrow S (2018) Mann, war, and cyberspace: dualities of infrastructural power in America. Theory Soc 47(1):61–85
Thacker SB, Berkelman RL (1988) Public health surveillance in the United States. Epidemiol Rev 10(1):164–190
The Communist Party’s Central Committee (CPCC), The State Council (2021) Notification of the State Council to Strengthen Grassroot Governance Mechanisms and Their Modernization of Governance Capacity. http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-07/11/content_5624201.htm. Accessed 10 Jul 2022
Tomba L (2014) The government next door: neighborhood politics in urban China. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY
Van der Geest S, Finkler K (2004) Hospital ethnography: introduction. Soc Sci Med 59(10):1995–2001
Wang E (2023) 回望2022: 我們問了7位中國人, 去年掙了多少?過得還好嗎? https://theinitium.com/article/20230127-mainland-life-for-the-common-people-2022-review/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=basic0129&utm_medium=email. Accessed 28 Jan 2023.
Wang F, Yin H, Zhou Z (2012) The adoption of bottom-up governance in China’s homeowner associations. Manag Organ Rev 8(3):559–583
Wang X (2020a) Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside. Farrar, Straus and Giroux Originals x Logic
Wang Y (2020b) In China, the ‘Great Firewall’ Is Changing a Generation. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020b/09/01/china-great-firewall-generation-405385. Accessed October 10 2022
Warf B (2011) Geographies of global Internet censorship. GeoJournal 76:1–23
Wen Y (2021) Branding and legitimation: China’s party diplomacy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. China Rev 21(1):55–89
Xinkaipu (2022) Financial Report January-June 2022. Via Finance Ifeng: https://app.finance.ifeng.com/data/stock/ggzw.php?id=714762523992&symbol=300248&ggtype=20. Accessed 24 Oct 2022
Xinmin (2022) Shanghai subway piloted the Metropolis App today, one screen displaying Covid test + health code + trave fare. http://news.xinmin.cn/2022/05/30/32175717.html. Accessed 24 Oct 2022
Xu B (2017) The Politics of Compassion. Stanford University Press, In The Politics of Compassion
Yan S (2019) The village testing China’s social credit system: driven by big data, its citizens earn a star rating. https://scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3012574/village-testing-chinas-social-credit-system. Accessed 10 Jul 2022.
Yang G (2021) Online lockdown diaries as endurance art. Ai & Society, pp1–10
Yang G, Wang W (eds) (2021) Engaging social media in China: platforms, publics, and production. MSU Press
Ye Y (2021) To improve governance, China Ups control over its grassroots. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007977/to-improve-governance%2C-china-ups-control-over-its-grassroots. Accessed 10 Jul 2022
Yu H, Li S (2022) The great leap forward of tens millions of Covid testing industry: no future after getting rich in one night. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oEM5wCM48rSBUyUgYIIM2w. Accessed 26 May 2022
Yu H, Chen X (2022) Nucleic acid “Great Leap Forward” reduced temperature, multiple areas halt normalization of mass testing, what does it imply? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/qvVWek1jazhcahCxwmoRqg Accessed 23 June 2022
Yuan L (2022) Bumingbai Podcasts with Guoguang Wu, Xia Cai, Dongyan Jin, Chenggang Xu, Xianfeng Yin, Ying Yang. https://www.bumingbai.net/. Accessed on different dates in September and October 2022
Zhang L (2010) In search of paradise: middle-class living in a Chinese Metropolis. Connell University Press, Ithaca, NY
Zhang X (2022) Decoding China’s COVID-19 health code apps: the legal challenges. In Healthcare 10(8):1479. MDPI
Zhou B, Zhong Y (2021) Social media, collective mourning and extended affective space: a computational communication analysis of Li Wenliang’s Weibo comments (2020–2021). Int Mass Media 43(3):79–106
Zhou SL et al (2021) Lessons on mobile apps for COVID-19 from China. J Saf Sci Resil 2(2):40–49
Zuboff S (2019) The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Hatchette, New York
Acknowledgements
Funding for research was generously provided by the Society of Woman Geographers, and by the Department of Geography, Graduate School, and the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Chen, X. (2023). The Venue Code: Digital Surveillance, Spatial (Re)organization, and Infrastructural Power During the Covid Pandemic in China. In: Goodspeed, R., Sengupta, R., Kyttä, M., Pettit, C. (eds) Intelligence for Future Cities. CUPUM 2023. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31746-0_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31746-0_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-31745-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-31746-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)