China, the Last Frontier: Zero Covid

Everyone around the world has heard of China’s ‘Zero Covid’ policy, and think of extreme measures, entire city lockdowns based on only a handful of cases, stringent entrance criteria with excessive quarantines, and pretty much heavy-handed government over-management.

But let me tell you how it works at ground level, and some of the serious advantages (as long as things don’t go sour), and how they know if things go sour and what they do about it.

Every city and community requires everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, to have an app on their cellphone that shows a ‘green code’ to enter public spaces. That includes metro stations, shopping centers, food stores, buses, airplanes…any place that’s public. You show your code at the door, and without the green code, you get sent back out. Here is what the green code for Shenzhen looks like: With this code, I can go anywhere. I am asked to show it pretty much constantly…maybe 10 times a day. It indicates that I have updated Covid tests and that I did not test negative. Sort of. More on that.

To access this code, it’s in a mini-program embedded within a platform on my phone called WeChat. WeChat is a social network platform that holds mini-programs (like add-ons) that you download to do lots of things. Think of it as like as a customizable browser, but it accesses things like your bank account, phone number, and your personal ID (verified…more on that) for the mini-programs to function. I have learned maybe 5% of what they can do, but the three most common ones are the chatting platform, the Health Code app, and people use it to pay for everything (they show their personal WeChat code, and the cashier scans that and the money is deducted from their account). They pay their bills, buy plane tickets, pay rent, buy groceries, order take out, order from and pay restaurants, pay personal debts; everything. China has become an entirely cashless society. Some of the mini-programs that get downloaded are like entire websites themselves with hundreds of links. It’s amazing, and all in Chinese. But you do EVERYTHING through WeChat and the mini-programs. Losing your phone here is like losing your identity. Even letting your battery run dry is a kiss of death.

So you cannot survive without WeChat downloaded, and the Health Code app installed. I haven’t linked my bank account yet as I don’t have one, but when I pay with cash, people look at me like I’m a dinosaur. My bar today didn’t have change for a 10 RMB note (about $1.50).

Downloading WeChat is easy (the download is online) but you have to verify your ID before you can activate it. China is very strict about people using their real identities, since so much personal info is linked to WeChat, so you have to navigate through a series of steps to self-verify by putting in a Chinese phone number, taking a photo of your passport page, inputting your full name and entry date to China, recording a video of yourself reading a series of numbers, etc. It’s crazy advanced and the app walks you through it…in Chinese. Of course, that means you have a Chinese phone number, so one of the first things I had to do in quarantine was figure out how to get a Chinese SIM card. Unfortunately, that means going into a store for that phone service; something you cannot do without the green code…Catch-22. Fortunately, there is a phone service especially for expats that will take your personal info and overnight express you a SIM card for $5. So I ordered one online, got my card, activated my phone number, downloaded WeChat, then validated and activated my WeChat account.

Then I had to download the Health Code app. Each city has their own app…Shanghai has one called “Alipay” (which has the payment system embedded within it) and is rapidly becoming the universal one for all of China. Shenzhen has one (but I forget the name..something like SZiU) that has an English version, so that’s the one I used. Each one has to be validated and activated separately. But here’s the rub…you need the Shanghai app to enter the airport in Shanghai, and you need the Shenzhen app to board the plane so you can get off in Shenzhen, so I had to figure out both of them. Which I did.

So now I have the apps, they are activated, I’ve learned how to navigate around within them (something that has become mindlessly simple). To help with navigation, every entranceway has a QR code that you scan with WeChat and it navigates to show the Health Code for you. Easy, but unadvisable…more on that, too.

Now here’s where it gets important…you must keep your health code GREEN. If it turns red, like this, you are screwed. You have to go home, and basically stay in quarantine until it turns green again (like, two weeks). Which is easy, since you cannot go anywhere anyway. Often it turns yellow, in which case you have to immediately go to a testing station (more on that) and get a Covid test. It all reminds me of the movie Logan’s Run and the Lifeclock Crystals in the palms of their hands. And yeah, that was my health code at one point, the day before my quarantine ended. I was a bit terrified.

There is a serious downside to all this. WeChat (and especially Alipay) are linked to the police. If you have a red code and you go out in public, they will know and they will track you down and arrest your ass. That’s one way they keep Covid from spreading, but it can be abused. There was a protest in front of a public place in Shanghai a while back, and the police just turned everyone’s health code red who was there (they all had to scan their codes to get into the place). The crowd quickly dissipated and went home, since they realized the police knew who every single person was, and they were all subject to arrest for violating quarantine at that moment. Scary, and it gives a new definition to ‘Red China’.

In any case, I wasn’t going anywhere and later I learned that they turn everyone in quarantine’s code red the day before quarantine ends so they don’t leave early. Mine turned green that night.

Now the next question: how do you keep it Green?

Well, you personally have little control over that. When you enter a public place and scan your code, the system logs your location. If someone in that vicinity tests positive for Covid, you get tagged as someone with ‘close contact’ and your code turns yellow. Even if you happen to walk into a ‘high risk neighborhood’ and you do anything that tags your location, your code will change when the system notices.

But regardless, in addition to hoping your code stays green, you also have to get a regular Covid test: you see in my current health code that the bottom left says “NAT data > 24 hour negative”. That means every 24 hours, me and the other 9 million people here in Shenzhen have to get a Nucleic Acid Covid test. Nine million tests per day, every day. Think about that next time you need a Covid test in the US, and you call your Primary Care Physician and get an appointment for two weeks from Thursday, and a 5 minute time slot where you have to pull up in your car and get swabbed, then wait several days for the result to get emailed to you or something, but meanwhile you have to pay the $45 and file for your insurance.

Here in Shenzhen, every single person gets a free Covid test…EVERY SINGLE DAY. And if they don’t, that little window that says “NAT data > 24 hour negative” disappears, and you cannot go into public places. You don’t have to quarantine (since your code is green), and you won’t get arrested for being outdoors, but you can’t go anywhere public where you need to be scanned.

So how do they do that many tests, every day? They have kiosks set up everywhere. There is one about every block all over town. You line up (along with about a hundred other people) and the line moves very quickly. No worries about being so near a hundred people, because everyone is wearing masks, and better yet…you know with about 100% certainty that not one person within 20 miles of you has Covid. Because the system works that well.

Anyway, when you approach the end of the line, you scan a QR code and your personal WeChat code appears. Not your health code, but another one that identifies you. They scan that and it goes into a database. Then you walk up to the window, sit down, get swabbed and leave. The swabbing takes about 4 seconds so the line moves FAST. Check out this video:

Then in about 4 hours, your test result shows up in another app in WeChat that keeps a record of all your Covid tests. Here’s the interesting part…they don’t actually know which test is YOURS, as the line shuffles around between scanning your code and getting swabbed. But it doesn’t matter…they process the results in batches of about 20, and if there is any Covid in that batch, they just go the database of about 100 people around that batch and turn off their NAT test result and turn their codes yellow, and they all have to go get tested again. They quickly figure out who was the positive person as they appear in two batches, and everyone else gets the green light.

So then they start contact tracing that person (or people). Recently they had 19 cases dispersed around different testing stations, and quickly figured out that all the people had been in the same karaoke bar a few nights earlier, so they turned their, and everyone who lives in that part of town, green codes yellow or red . Suddenly, about a half million people had to quarantine and get new Covid tests…but these weren’t random people, they were people who lived near Ground Zero. Plus the 19 people from the karaoke bar.

Heavy handed, yes…but brutally efficient. With a quarter of the world’s population, China has had fewer Covid cases than most small towns in the US. So even though their Zero Covid policy stings when it is triggered, it sure works when everything is going smoothly.