Abstract
China’s unprecedented measures to mobilize its diverse surveillance apparatus played a key part in the country’s successful containment of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Critics worldwide believe these invasive technologies, in the hands of an authoritarian regime, could trample the right to privacy and curb fundamental civil and human rights. However, there is little domestic public resistance in China about technology-related privacy risks during the pandemic. Drawing on academic research and a semantic network analysis of media frames, we explore the contextual political and cultural belief systems that determine public support for authorities’ ever-expanding access to personal data. We interrogate the longer-term trajectories—including the guardian model of governance, sociotechnical imagination of technology, and communitarian values—by which the understanding of technology and privacy in times of crisis has been shaped. China’s actions shed light on the general acceptance of the handover of personal data for anti-epidemic purposes in East Asian societies like South Korea and Singapore.
Highlights
China’s unprecedented measures to mobilize its diverse surveillance apparatus played a key part in the country’s successful containment of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic
The surveillance system has prompted a storm of international concern and criticism of the invasive technologies used by an authoritarian regime in ways that could trample the right to privacy and data protection and repressively curb other fundamental civil and human rights (Huang, 2020; Singer & Sang-Hun, 2020)
An analytical framework consisting of three aspectsda high level of expectation and confidence in state intervention based on the guardian model of governance, a cultural horizon of technology through which technologies are intertwined with nationbuilding and national rejuvenation, and a communitarian tradition with less concern over individual rightsdoffers a much-needed understanding of the myth behind Chinese people’s obedience to the authorities’ ever-expanding access to personal data and cybersecurity during the pandemic
Summary
One of the biggest concerns with epidemiological tracing measures is intrusive state surveillance into citizen privacy. While such surveillance on people’s location, activity, or biometrics is largely and increasingly used for the containment of the coronavirus, it significantly expands state power with greater social and political control over citizens Such control risks infringing fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy, as well as entrenching power imbalances between the national governments and its citizens. The guardianship discourse convinces subordinates to believedand welcomedthat the state should intervene in civil society for the sake of social benefits and judge the governance capacity in terms of the outcomes This guardianship model of governance is exemplified in the politics of public emergencies and disasters in China (Lyu, 2012; Xu, 2016; Zhao et al, 2017). We thereby ask our first research question (RQ1): How do media discourses implicate the guardianship model of governance beneath their narratives in COVID-19 coverage?
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