There are many actions China is taking to put over half a billion people in partial or total lockdown as the coronavirus continues to spread. China has relied on a variety of low and high tech measures to help enforce quarantine in vast areas of the country. They also added the incentive that citizens are financially rewarded for reporting others that don’t follow quarantine rules. “These methods reflect a decades-long history of social control now being mobilized on an unprecedented scale”(Feng). There are additional ways the local and national authorities are keeping their citizens in check about quarantine rules.
One of the actions that’s been taken is full-blow lockdown. Hubei province has had the most intense lockdown measures since it was the center point of the coronavirus outbreak with nearly three-fourths of the confirmed cases in China. Since the week of January 23, when the capital city of Hubei prohibited people from leaving, government officials across the province have gradually intensified efforts to keep people inside. In a household only one person can be sent out every three days to buy groceries, apartment compounds only allow people to use one gate, and everyone’s temperature is checked before entering. Nevertheless coronavirus cases still continue to increase, so the Hubei government began enforcing “the strictest, around-the-clock, closed management” for all residential complexes, banning the use of private cars, and not allowing people to leave their apartments without permission. In addition they require anyone buying cold medicine to reveal their temperature as well as the address and id number at the pharmacy. Many community officials are now buying and delivering the medication and groceries to cut down on people needing to leave the house.
Most of China that does not struggle with nearly as many coronavirus cases does not have as extreme controls as Hubei. Many cities across China have been using a monitoring scheme that breaks down areas into small grid-like units that are monitored and enforce regulations. These enforcements are made by community officials, which are a mix of paid employees and volunteers. If people refuse to cooperate with anything involving quarantine orders, the grid workers can call for backup from the local police. Each person is supposed to get their temperature taken when entering a complex and note if they recently left the city, but travel records rely on individuals self-reporting, which can result in lax control measures.
The number of grid workers patrolling the streets has increased to attempt to offset weak enforcement of the quarantine rules in some neighborhoods. For example the Zhejiang province has one of the highest rates of cases besides Hubei now has 33,000 grid workers supervising neighborhoods.
Resource:
Feng, Emily, and Amy Cheng. “Restrictions And Rewards: How China Is Locking Down Half A Billion Citizens.” NPR, NPR, 21 Feb. 2020, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/21/806958341/restrictions-and-rewards-how-china-is-locking-down-half-a-billion-citizens.
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