Living in the era of codes: a reflection on China’s health code system

This article offers a critical analysis of China’s health code system, a data-powered pandemic control and contact tracing system that supposedly subjects all individuals in the country to its panopticon control, a surveillance system that monitors and categorises the Chinese population into the healthy (green), the dubious (yellow), and the unhealthy (red). The article highlights the pretence of surveillance as care and the digital divide that normalises discrimination against the elderly and other digitally left-behind population. It also illustrates how, from policy making and technological design to user engagement, the health code system is implemented, optimised, and used in everyday life to meet the needs of the vulnerable population. The health code is better taken as a medium of adaptable and communicative process that can reset the relation between the system and the lifeworld. It is the process of interchange between the system and the lifeworld that deserves our critical attention.