The shunned: People from virus-hit city tracked, quarantined

Neighbors, don’t go outdoors under any circumstances!”During the past decade, the Chinese government crafted a rigorous system of social control, which it calls “stability maintenance.” Through methods high-tech and low, from face-scanning cameras to neighborhood informants to household registration, Beijing keeps track of its 1.4 billion citizens, managing them via community-level officials.Such monitoring doesn’t typically bother most people in China. On Jan. 25, an extraordinary televised meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s ruling inner circle of power, ordered officials to carry out “prevention and control work” with special emphasis on “monitoring, screening and warning.” Since then, millions of local officials and officers have mobilized to monitor, screen and warn — and restrict, to varying degrees — in a governance approach that Beijing calls “blanket-style tracking.”“We must effectively manage people from Wuhan according to the principles of ‘tracking people, registering them, community management, inspecting them at their door, mass transfers, treat abnormalities,’” Li Bin, deputy director of the Chinese National Health Commission, said at a news conference the next day.Officials say — and some experts agree — that the stringent measures are necessary. At first, she said, she felt shock, then fury.“It listed a bunch of people in the whole city who had come back from Wuhan,” said the woman, Na. Like many Chinese, she gave only her last name so she could speak openly on a sensitive topic. Police are vigilant about cracking down on information spread through unofficial channels, and many people are often hesitant to speak to the foreign press.“I was so angry,” Na said. Most posts were deleted, but the censors left up a post by Cui Baoqiu, the vice president of Chinese cellphone maker Xiaomi, who criticized the leaks for stigmatizing people from Wuhan.“Sick people are not criminals,” Cui said.