Privacy lost: Appropriating surveillance technology in China’s fight against COVID-19

Jun Liu and Hui Zhao

Business Horizons, 2021, vol. 64, issue 6, 743-756

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.

Keywords: China's pandemic response; Communitarianism; Guardian model of governance; Public surveillance; Technology-related privacy risks; Sociotechnical imagination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:64:y:2021:i:6:p:743-756

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2021.07.004

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