26 China
Chaguan China tires of covid controls
The example of Prohibition in America should worry the party
A s China enters its 33rd month of draconian pandemic con-
trols, a growing number of citizens are discovering what life is
like outside the law. Some of these lessons are grim. Local police
departments and officials have responded to public weariness
with “zero-covid” policies by emphasising the punishments that
await rule-breakers. Almost every day a propaganda notice goes
viral, for instance announcing someone’s detention for selling
fake test certificates to long-distance lorry drivers, or for bypass-
ing a checkpoint to go to work. A man from Shandong province is
in custody after dodging quarantine to attend his own wedding.
Some lessons about outlaw life border on the comic. Just ask
the hipsters drawn to Beijing’s burgeoning underground club
scene. They are learning that “ruins parties”—secret dance-nights
held in empty office blocks or disused commercial sites—may be
more romantic in the telling than in reality. Many of the capital’s
nightclubs have been banned for months from holding events, es-
pecially after a mini-outbreak centred on a bar district in June. In
response, dance-starved Beijingers, including university students
and young professionals, organise ruins parties far from the gaze
of pandemic workers and of “big whites”, the guards who enforce
covid rules while swaddled in white protective overalls.
Inspected by your columnist several days after it hosted a pop-
up club, a venue in northern Beijing is more gritty than glamor-
ous. It is reached by climbing over railings into a weed-choked,
abandoned entertainment complex. Arrows and graffiti tags are
spray-painted on walls within, marking a route past dining tables
still decorated with plastic flowers and thick layers of dust, then
down marble stairs into a dark, cavernous basement. The floor is
littered with mouldering tiles fallen from the ceiling and beer
cans, next to fresh graffiti reading “Life is a Festival”. The authori-
ties never discovered that party, though another event later in Sep-
tember ended with trouble after a police car was thumped.
Yet, revealingly, ruins parties are not seen primarily as acts of
thrill-seeking rebellion. A college graduate who attends such par-
ties says that she and her friends would rather go to regular night-
clubs, but are prevented by pandemic rules that they consider
“stupid”. The young woman describes how she accepted controls
early in the pandemic, frightened by reports of deaths and of over-


The Economist October 1st 2022
whelmed hospitals. But her trust faded, especially after a harsh,
bungled lockdown that saw 24m people strictly quarantined for
two months this year in Shanghai, China’s most prosperous city.
Calling the Omicron variant “not that serious”, she is more fright-
ened by rules that require Beijingers to scan qr codes with a move-
ment-tracking smartphone app each time they enter a shop or
public building or catch a taxi. That app generates green health
codes needed to enter any public place. Such tracking systems,
which exist all over China in various forms, create a constant risk
of being ordered into quarantine for visiting the same place as a
suspected case, even hours later. Her parents accept such controls,
the graduate says, suggesting that older Chinese were rendered
“obedient” by long-ago hardships. But like a striking number of
her peers, she works hard to keep her own movements hidden.
Until recently, scofflaws tricked guards and taxi drivers by
showing old screenshots of green health codes, avoiding the need
to scan qr codes afresh. To stop this, the latest Beijing health
codes boast an animated border and a synthesised voice. Rule-
breakers now record short videos of a scan generating a health
code, and show them. Others boast of maintaining two health
codes, one registered with their Chinese identity card and one
with a passport. This lessens travellers’ risks of getting stuck,
should a health code be compromised by visiting a risky town or
city, a disaster which could trigger a ban on entering Beijing and
even orders to quarantine. That dodge is also against the rules. If
reports of prosecutions are any guide, covid law-breaking is on the
rise. Beijing police recently arrested drivers who helped people
enter the city from areas with cases of infection. Authorities in the
southern province of Guangdong charged software firms with
selling apps that generate fake health codes. Videos of scuffles
with big whites are increasingly common on social media.
When rule-breaking loses its stigma
Affluent Beijingers need not climb fences to attend secret parties.
Though Chaguan’s own tastes run to jazz more than hip-hop, in
the name of research he headed out late at night to a bar in a city-
centre skyscraper. He dropped the promoter’s name to join what
was ostensibly a private party, in the style of a speakeasy during
America’s alcohol-free Prohibition era. Two young men in club-
bing gear, both employed by technology firms, resisted the sug-
gestion that they were breaking rules (though they were), arguing
that they had scanned a qr code to enter. “We have to protect the
old people,” one said, in defence of pandemic controls. But they
admitted that China is “tired”, especially now that other countries
are living with covid. “It’s too much. We are the last place that is
like this,” he said, expressing the frequently heard hope that poli-
cies may ease after a Communist Party congress in October.
In truth, if leaders decide to live with covid, it would take many
months to change course, not least to fully vaccinate tens of mil-
lions of old people. That decision may be a while off. President Xi
Jinping continues to call zero-covid proof of the superiority of
Communist Party rule, next to decadent Western democracies. Co-
vid’s economic impact makes many headlines. But the party
should worry about echoes of Prohibition, too. In 1931, shortly be-
fore America ended its experiment with temperance, a national
commission noted that many respectable citizens saw no wrong
in drinking, concluding: “No law can be effectively enforced ex-
cept with the assistance and co-operation of the law-abiding ele-
ment.” China is not at a point of revolt. But the flouting of covid
rules is no longer as shameful as before. Something has to give. 