by Abigail Weston
The application of biopolitics is incredibly broad, with the basic definition of biopolitics being governmental structures restricting the population’s bodily presence and/or functions. Biopolitics can be used by western liberal governments for multiple purposes but the most repressive form of biopolitics comes from authoritarian regimes such as the People’s Republic of China. The COVID-19 pandemic gave states ample opportunity to use biopolitics as a way of cracking down on protest and public dissent.
The social credit system has been used to influence population behavior by incentivizing conformity with government policy.
While the Chinese government has long been accustomed to interfering in the Chinese population’s lives, the measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, which are ongoing, have been an accurate representation of repressive biopolitics. The first event that the Chinese government enacted was the COVID-19 social credit pass installed on phones. The social credit system has been used to influence population behavior by incentivizing conformity with government policy. Through this system, the Chinese government has been able to not only keep a close eye on dissidents, but also actively intrude on their lives by using their individual social credit scores to bar them from fully participating in normal life activities.
A similar application was used during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereby a web-based COVID-19 pass was issued to Chinese citizens. This app not only indicated if a person was vaccinated, but also acted as a contact tracer indicating if a person had come in contact with the COVID-19 virus through social interactions. The application would display a red or green icon showing that a person had or had not come in contact with an infected person. If the icon was red, then a person was not allowed to leave a defined area, whether that be a town or an individual home depending on the province and the timeframe within the pandemic. The green icon allowed travel without as many limitations.
Biopolitics, in this case, are shown through the restriction of movement in relation to a person’s political opinions rather than a person’s health status.
The Chinese government also used this application to prevent protesters, who were planning to protest COVID-19 lockdowns, from leaving towns or homes, effectively quelling potential protests. While many governments in both the west and the east employed the use of lockdowns in an attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19, Chinese authorities used the crisis as a way to silence dissidents on a mass scale through the justification of public health. Biopolitics, in this case, are shown through the restriction of movement in relation to a person’s political opinions rather than a person’s health status.
Though the use of biopolitics within China is not an unknown phenomenon, the COVID-19 pandemic allowed for an increase in the severity and degree of biopolitics. Restricting the movement of citizens due to political stance is a very good representation of the use of biopolitics by the state against those with dissenting opinions. In essence, the health crisis allowed for a perfect storm in which the Chinese government could not only justify an extreme use of biopolitical power, but would also not come under scrutiny from the international community for such courses of action.
Abigail Weston is a master’s degree student at Vilnius University with the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in the Eastern European and Russian Studies course. Abigail’s specific area of expertise is in Russian security culture; her master’s thesis is a cultural analysis of the Russian Federal Security Service focusing on the cultural elements that impact this organizations’ behavior. Abigail has additional professional interests in the developments of Eastern European region culture as it relates to the cultural memory of the Soviet Union.
This blog is a part of a blog series written by the BAMSE Tartu intensive course students. The blog series analyses the impact of crises on the politics of history, challenges of democracy, biopolitics and energy security. This blog is belongs to the biopolitics part of the blog series. Read more about the blog series on Bamse News & Events website.