Four Chinese officials and one state-owned enterprise (SOE) manager in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, were accused of abusing the health code system and randomly turning bank depositors’ health codes red.
According to the city’s disciplinary watchdog, Deputy Party Secretary of the city’s Political and Legal Commission, Feng Xianbin, and the city’s top leader of the Youth League, Zhang Linlin, decided to give red health codes to bank depositors who came from other cities.
The Youth League, like the Young Pioneers, is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), controls young people in China, and has branches in Chinese middle schools.
Feng and Zhang instructed three others—Zhao Yong, Chen Chong, and Yang Yaohuan—to make 1,317 people’s health codes red, the disciplinary watchdog said in a notice dated June 22.
A red health code indicates the highest level of COVID-19 infection. Residents with a red code are not allowed to enter public venues and must undergo two weeks of centralized isolation.
At least four banks in Henan froze cash withdrawals, citing internal system upgrades. But depositors said that neither those banks nor officials have since offered any information on why or how long the process would take, prompting angry protests outside the office of the banking regulator in Zhengzhou in May.
Health Codes: An Additional Tool of Control for the CCP
It is noteworthy that, among the depositors whose health codes were turned red, “871 people were not in Zhengzhou but were given red codes by scanning the Zhengzhou venue code sent by others,” the disciplinary watchdog said in the notice.But the organization gave no detail as to who sent the venue codes, why the depositors, who were not in Zhengzhou, were required to scan Zhengzhou venue codes, and how their travel plans were accessed by the health code officials and staffers.
China is known for its use of big data to control people in the country, and now the health code system has been added to facilitate the monitoring and control.
What is little known by the outside world is that the health code system was initially developed in February 2020 by Zhong Yi, a science and technology police officer in Hangzhou, according to a state mouthpiece Outlook Weekly.
It took Zhong and his team only six days to design and develop the health code system. It was officially inaugurated in Hangzhou on Feb. 11, 2020, and was soon rolled out nationwide. Within two weeks, over 200 cities in 18 provinces in China were using the health code system.
Local authorities work with tech companies to generate profiles of users based on geographic location, travel history, COVID PCR test results, and other health data. The colors of the health code include green, yellow, and red, and indicate whether the holder can enter a building or public place. Health codes are enforced by local officials, who have the power to quarantine people or restrict their movements.
Two of the people accused of health code abuse are directly involved with big data management and usage, according to the notice issued by the disciplinary authority of Zhengzhou.
Chen Chong is a staffer with Zhengzhou municipal big data bureau and team leader of health code management under the municipal pandemic control and prevention command. Yang Yaohuan is a deputy general manager of Zhengzhou Big Data Development Company Limited, a wholly state-owned enterprise authorized by the local government to handle data collected by the government authorities.
Depositors to Henan banks are not the only people confined by the red health code due to reasons other than their COVID-19 status.
The local police in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan Province, went to Xie’s home on Nov. 5 to coerce him into staying at home, which Xie refused to do. On Nov. 6, when Xie arrived at Changsha airport in the early morning, he found his health code had been turned red and that hospital Emergency Room staffers and local pandemic prevention and control people were at the airport. He could not go to Shanghai, and two of the pandemic prevention and control staffers tried to force him into their automobile. However, Xie managed to leave the airport on his own.
The local authorities of Zhengzhou at first claimed that health codes turning red was caused by a system failure, which aroused more online blasts. They investigated after the CCP’s state propaganda media reported the negative online public opinion about the incident.
The five people involved in the health code changing were punished according to the municipal disciplinary authority. Feng was removed from both his party and government positions, and Zhang Linlin was given an internal warning from the CCP. The other three were given a demerit.
Lao Dongyan, a professor at the Law School of China’s Tsinghua University, told Chinese media that the use of health codes for purposes other than epidemic prevention is suspected of violating Article 66 of China’s “Infectious Disease Prevention and Treatment Law” and the 34th article of “Personal Information Protection Law,” and those relevant government officials are suspected of abuse of power according to China’s Criminal Law.
