The Messy Afterlife of China’s Covid Health Codes

In March the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi held a ceremony to mark the end of an era. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the city government had collected a huge amount of data about its 7.5 million inhabitants to adhere to China’s strict Covid Zero rules. With the pandemic-era policy over, that potentially sensitive information—comprising 1 billion data points including names, ID numbers, phone numbers, addresses and personal health records—was no longer needed, so Wuxi was performatively scrubbing it from its cloud computing platforms. At a city-run data center, a large screen showed a progress bar inch toward 100%, before finally displaying the words “Data destruction is complete.” The city posted a video of the event on its social media, along with the message “Please don’t worry! It’s been destroyed!”

Shanghai, located less than 100 miles east of Wuxi, made a different decision. In July it announced it would “upgrade” its pandemic-era health code, converting it into a permanent city code, using the data as the backbone of a system that would help deepen digital access for its 25 million residents to use to visit the doctor, take public transportation or check out tourist spots. It even held a competition for residents to submit innovative ways to integrate the codes into city life. The proposals included using the codes to queue at the hospital and to ensure only qualified people had access to parking spaces set aside for disabled people, according to the state-run People’s Daily.