The Stumbling Balance between Public Health and Privacy amid the Pandemic in China

Abstract

In China, to fight against COVID-19, a variety of high- and low-tech methods have been created and applied to find and monitor people confirmed or suspected to have COVID-19 and their close contacts. Such mass monitoring may have the effect of containing and managing the pandemic, but it has brought about prevalent concerns of privacy. Undoubtedly, China is confronted with fulfilling the task of public health surveillance while, at the same time, protecting personal privacy. However, there are three factors that have caused these balancing efforts to falter. The first factor is the lack of strong and solid legal foundations to authorize and control the surveillance while giving sufficient support for personal privacy. The second factor is the huge social mobilization that entails the involvement of a large number of different entities and individuals in the mass surveillance, for whom the general principles of privacy protection proposed by public authorities and academia may not be well understood and/or may be difficult to follow in practice. The third factor is the collectivist thinking and obedience to, and in many cases reverence for, the authority that is deeply entrenched in Chinese culture and easily overwhelms the individualism-oriented modern privacy culture. To get rid of these handicaps in a short time and, hence, to strengthen privacy would be an extravagant hope. However, a landmark piece of legislation on privacy and personal information protection and other supporting regulations in the near future are what we need most. In any event, the current surveillance should not be a ‘new normal’.