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The pandemic is well under control in China. Hardly any new infections, just a few restrictions. However, when new cases arise, people react regardless of their rights.
By Steffen Wurzel, ARD-Studio Shanghai
People are dancing again in nightclubs in major Chinese cities, like before the Covid 19 pandemic. Like here in Shanghai last weekend. People go out again, the shops are full. From a purely statistical point of view, the risk of contracting the infection is very low only in the most populous country in the world. The official number of new infections each day is generally between one figure and another. Most of these are the so-called imported cases, i.e. Chinese returned from abroad.
At the entrance of some restaurants, in the authorities, in bank branches and hospitals, the temperature is often still measured, but otherwise everything is back to normal in China. Shops, malls, restaurants and spas: almost everything is open again, schools and universities in any case.
“My life has felt reasonably normal again since late March / early April,” says a 39-year-old from Shanghai. “I only wear the mask when it fills up around me. So whenever there’s a shove somewhere.”
Sanitary code and patchwork quilt
“When you take the subway, you absolutely have to wear a mask because the air cannot circulate well there,” says a beautician from Shanghai. “We still have to take the temperature or show the health code on the phone when we go out, in pubs, clubs or karaoke and so on. But that’s okay with me, I’m used to it.”
The health code mentioned by the 40-year-old is generated with a smartphone app. It has been omnipresent for people in China since the beginning of the Covid crisis. The app calculates a personal risk from the location and data of the wireless network: green, yellow or red. Without the app and without the green code, it is almost impossible to travel to China. As a result, authorities can track who is where or where, when, even better than before.
A green code is usually required, especially at train stations, airports and motorway toll booths. In short: every time you move across city and provincial borders within China. There is no Uniform Crown app in China, on the contrary – there is a digital patchwork quilt. Every provincial government, every city administration gets confused. The mutual trust of the Chinese authorities is obviously not that great.
Data protection and fundamental rights do not play a role
If several spot infections are confirmed somewhere in China these days, the excitement is great. When two new cases became known a few days ago in the city of Manzhouli, in the far north of the country, the news deserved a wide coverage.
As a rule, mass testing is then organized on site. Hundreds of thousands to several million people are being tested for coronavirus within days. The affected cities will be largely isolated from the rest of the country for the period.
Many large-scale tests and constant follow-up of contacts: these are the most important means of the Chinese authorities in the fight against the virus. Personnel and money are irrelevant. Then there are the almost completely closed external borders. Furthermore, it is fundamental: data protection and fundamental personal rights play no role in the Chinese dictatorship. Authorities create digital motion profiles for people, use images from surveillance cameras, and don’t have to take the rule of law into account. Unlike Europe, there are no public debates: neither on the measures of the crown, nor on the origin of the pandemic.
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