Wang Yu (王宇), hailed by the US as an International Woman of Courage, has already been arrested, imprisoned and harassed by the Chinese Communist Party for her work as a human rights lawyer representing rights advocates, Uighur academics and Falun Gong practitioners. This year, her movements within her home nation have also been restricted by a color-coded app on her smartphone that is supposed to protect people from COVID-19.
The health codes have become ubiquitous in China as the nation has struggled to contain COVID-19, pushing the public to a breaking point that erupted in protests late last month.
The Chinese government last week announced that it would discontinue the national health code, but cities and provinces have their own versions, which have been more dominant.
Photo: AP
In Beijing last week, restaurants, offices, hotels and gyms were still requiring local codes to enter.
Even after lockdowns end, some dissidents and rights advocates predict the health codes would remain in place in some form.
Drawing on telecom network data and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results, health codes are relatively simple. Everyone is assigned a QR code on their phone that switches between green, yellow or red, depending on factors such as whether they have been in the same spot as someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 (yellow) or if they themselves have tested positive (red). Only people with green codes can go about normal daily life.
However, Wang’s experience shows that the codes can become another tool of social control in China.
In March, she traveled to Datong, an industrial coal-mining hub in northern China, to offer counseling. While largely prevented from practicing law in China, she said she still provides advice as a “citizen advocate” on human rights cases.
About 346km west of Beijing, the trip required downloading a separate local health code. While most people have had two codes, a national one and one for the city or province they live in, people who travel have needed yet another one from the place they are visiting. Without it, they cannot enter a mall, restaurant or even book a hotel.
The day after Wang arrived in Datong, she said her local code turned yellow, which meant she would have to be centrally quarantined in a hotel.
“How did it suddenly become yellow?” she asked. “I didn’t have a cough or any symptoms.”
Wang wanted to get home before being quarantined, which could have lasted a few weeks. She bought a train ticket. After presenting her case for hours, submitting three negative PCR tests and her body temperature, she said the government official on the telephone relented.
“Why don’t I change your code to green?” they said.
Ten minutes later, the health code turned green and the pandemic prevention workers at the railway station allowed Wang to leave Datong, she said.
“To some extent, it’s become an electronic handcuff,” said Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), another human rights lawyer who is not related to Wang Yu.
He said another passenger ran into similar travel issues in January when flying from Wuhan to Beijing.
Wang Quanzhang said he eventually resolved the issue after calling a local Wuhan government hotline, complaining to airport staff and posting on Sina Weibo.
Meanwhile in August, two months ahead of the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress, Wang Yu said her Beijing health code stopped working properly, despite her testing negative for COVID-19.
At turns, it became red or got stuck on a pop-up window. With places in Beijing then requiring a green health code to even enter a park, Wang Yu decided to leave the capital for her parent’s home in Inner Mongolia. She said she waited out the political meeting, thinking her that app issues might have been designed to keep her away.
She kept calling Beijing government hotlines to get her code back to normal and late last month it turned green again.
Beijing police and the Beijing Municipal Health Commission did not respond to faxed requests for comment on Wang Yu’s case.
“The strongest feeling is that I have no freedom,” she said.
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