Modi’s app Vs Xi’s app: How China’s COVID-19 tracking app is a ‘digital handcuff’ used to crush dissent

New Delhi: While India’s CoWIN app proved to be a huge success in fighting the deadly pandemic as a contact tracer, China’s COVID-19 tracker apps have been increasingly used by the totalitarian regime of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to gag people and crush any dissent against the totalitarian government.

Equipped with the capability to insidiously track personal data at a rather alarming depth and detail—the health code system is a combination of mobile phone location tracking system along with government-issued ID numbers, COVID test results and vaccination status—the health code apps are being used as ‘digital handcuffs’ on the people.

Such is the invasion of life and privacy of people that they have to scan QR codes flying from drones hovering overhead on roads to get rights to passage and travel between localities across several cities.

The ‘Zero COVID’ policy of Xi Jinping has prodded these apps to become more invasive and insidious in their reach and sophistication. Now, they are used to control movement and access to public places.

Experts have cited several gaps which are opaque enough to let the government use this technology to maintain order rather than just the health angle professed publicly by Chinese authorities. The health code system is the new avatar of China’s social management philosophy driven by technology and allied to such draconian tech as face-recognition surveillance cameras, digital social security cards, digital money and so on.

Very recently, the Chinese authorities used the COVID surveillance system to their advantage to break a proposed demonstration in Henan province by bank depositors who have not been given access to their own money by banks.

Hundreds were to travel to Henan to demand their frozen funds, when suddenly their Covid trackers turned red: without a green code on their smartphone app, citizens lose access to public transport and public spaces such as restaurants and malls, not to mention the right to travel across the country.

A Reuters report had quoted several depositors afraid of the red code as then their kids would not be able to go to school.

The demonstration was thwarted successfully.

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