Services and surveillance during the pandemic lockdown: Residents’ committees in Wuhan and Beijing

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a lockdown of Wuhan, and strict control was imposed in many major Chinese cities, including the national capital of Beijing. Residents’ committee workers at the grass-roots level have played a critical role in the enforcement of the government’s pandemic prevention and control measures, through their day-to-day service and surveillance as local community managers. This article examines their work in Wuhan and Beijing neighbourhoods during the most critical periods of the outbreak, from late January to June 2020, and the challenges the workers faced as executors of the government’s community-based prevention policy. The two cities have developed different community strategies because of very different epidemiological situations and city functions.

Community pandemic prevention and control measures and their influence on citizen satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic in China

“…Most works only examine pandemic prevention in one or two regions [ 50 ]. At the national level, these comparisons do not analyze differences in pandemic prevention measures based on spatial divisions and community types [ 51 ]. This study described the allocation of community pandemic prevention and control measures, the distinction between urban and rural communities, and the disparities between Eastern China, Central China, and Western China.…”

“…There were 5433 confirmed cases in East China, 39,740 confirmed cases in Central China, and 15,408 confirmed cases in West China When the questionnaire was distributed. In Beijing, where the infection rate was less than 1%, the entire market continued to operate, and the free movement of residents rarely necessitated the provision of these services by the community [ 51 ]. However, the entire area of Wuhan was under lockdown, and the market was stagnant.…”

“…Therefore, some of the community-based measures are not available in less severe areas. For example, the application difference of coordinating delivery to a hospital is different between Wuhan and Beijing [ 51 ]. Economic level and public medical conditions may illustrate that there was no U-shaped relationship between the number of measures and satisfaction in rural areas compared with urban.…”

Building a Panopticon Through Nodal Governance: Mass Surveillance and Plural Policing in China’s COVID-19 Lockdown

“…In the original design, RCs are civil society nodes that link grassroots communities with local governments (Mok 1988). However, in reality, RC leaders are usually CCP members (Yang et al 2021). Due to the use of indirect elections, RC members also tend to be CCP members (Bing 2012).…”

“…The quarantined households needed to be monitored and assisted. These responsibilities mostly fell on the EMCs again, as RCs did not have sufficient resources (Yang et al 2021). A property market analyst made the following comment in Week Two, '… thanks to the pandemic, more people come to realise the importance of estate management services.…”