Casting Ancient Nets: Grid-Style Social Management During the Corona Cr

• In Event: Chinese Politics Mini-Conference: China’s Response to COVID-19: Bureaucracy, Governance and Public Opinion

Abstract

Building upon Foucault’s conceptualization of the milieu‚ which describes the natural and artificial barriers designed to regulate mobility and circulation in and between given systems‚ we analyze the organization of the Chinese security apparatus during the COVID crisis. Utilizing a convenience sample of local cases researched through policy documents, media coverage of anti-epidemic measures and their implementation, and additionally a crucial case study of Zhuji County-level city, we particularly scrutinize the appropriation of emergency measures on combating the virus, and how grid-style social management was put to use since the outbreak of COVID-19. Grid-style social management - a new grassroot administrative division aiming to mobilize neighborhood control and services - is a core element in China’s pursuit of economic growth without sacrificing political stability that aims at appropriating government technologies based on differentiation, surveillance and calculation. Looking through the lens of the milieu, we are able to show how the Chinese party-state has substituted earlier more interventionist approaches of social management with new techniques of social control. These new techniques draw on community mobilization and community self-government to implement everyday social control. At the same time, rigid organization and compartmentalized government structures allow for the swift implementation of drastic and interventionist measures. Building upon previous forms of social management, grid-style social management casts a net over the population that during non-crisis times remains open for population elements to contribute their share to the national economy. Once a crisis has been called, however, the net swiftly closes, establishing artificial barriers to prevent further circulation and working towards a speedy return to a pre-crisis state of affairs.

Authors

• Sabrina Habich-Sobiegalla, Freie Universität Berlin

• Franziska Plümmer, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law