Next China: Wall Street hits dead end - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Next China: Wall Street hits dead end - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Unhealthy Codes

It sounds like a sinister plot in a science fiction novel, but it’s all too real.

A major Chinese manufacturing hub allegedly abused its Covid health codes to stop investors returning to the city to protest being swindled out of billions of dollars. Several people said their codes turned red when at the main train station of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, meaning they couldn’t move about freely. They’d had green codes when they left home.

Residents show their health codes in Shanghai in April.

China uses a three-color health code system to track people who may have been infected by Covid. Red bars people from entering certain places or taking public transport, while green gives access. Users must scan codes at all public places. There were no risk areas in cities in Henan as of earlier this week, according to official data.

Such alleged misuse has caused a firestorm, adding to concerns the strict Covid restrictions imposed in mainland China and Hong Kong are doubling as a form of social control. Phone calls to the Zhengzhou city government and the local health authority went unanswered. An employee handling city government hotline inquiries told local media there was some error with their information database and the situation had been reported to the government for rectification. 

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Henan office of China’s banking regulator in May, demanding authorities ensure the return of tens of billions of yuan invested in what could be one of the nation’s largest financial scams. Small-scale protests aren’t unheard of in China, but they’re rare enough to attract attention from authorities who prize social stability, especially in a crucial leadership year for the Communist Party.

It might not have been the first instance of health-code misuse. A human rights lawyer accused authorities of meddling with his health code to bar him from traveling, the New York Times reported earlier this year.

This time, the suspected practice has been universally condemned. Even former editor of the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper said such manipulation jeopardized public support.

“If any local government tries to prevent the movement of certain people by controlling their health codes for other purposes, it’s not only a clear violation of Covid prevention rules but also jeopardizes authority of the system and the public’s support,” Hu Xijin posted on his Twitter-like Weibo account. “It’ll do more harm than good to our social governance.”