{"id":25709,"date":"2026-10-12T09:54:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T00:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/?p=25709"},"modified":"2026-10-12T09:54:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T00:54:55","slug":"open-lecture-new-challenges-that-north-and-south-korean-economies-are-facing-2-2-2-2-2-2-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/news\/2026\/10\/12\/25709\/","title":{"rendered":"\u3010Open Lecture\u3011Viral Iteration: Political Economy, AI, and the formation of Zero-COVID through the Lens of China\u2019s Health Code System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open Lecture Information<\/h2>\n

\u30bf\u30a4\u30c8\u30eb\/Title:<\/h3>\n

Viral Iteration: Political Economy, AI, and the formation of\u00a0Zero-COVID through the Lens of China\u2019s Health Code System<\/p>\n

\u8b1b\u5e2b\/Lecturer:<\/h3>\n

CHEN, Xiaoling<\/p>\n

Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore;<\/p>\n

Visiting Scholar, the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo<\/p>\n

\u65e5\u6642\/Day and Time:<\/h3>\n

Wednesday, 28th October, 2026, 17:00-18:40<\/p>\n

\u5834\u6240\/Venue\uff1a<\/h3>\n

Bldg.11, R<\/span>oom803,\u00a0<\/span>Waseda Campus<\/span>\u200b (in-person only)<\/p>\n

\u8a00\u8a9e\/Language:<\/h3>\n

Presented in English (No translation)<\/p>\n

\u5165\u5834\/Admission:<\/h3>\n

Free and open to everyone<\/p>\n

Abstract:<\/h3>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n

While many countries adopted digital surveillance for COVID-19 contact tracing, none implemented it as pervasively or invasively as China through its health code system. The health code exemplified a color-coded mechanism to categorize individuals, populations, spaces, and entire regions or countries\u2014where green, yellow, and red codes meant low, medium, and high risk of COVID-19 exposure or outbreak, respectively. Throughout 2022, long after much of the world had lifted COVID restrictions, these apps continued to dictate mobility and access to public spaces and\u00a0services\u00a0for millions of Chinese citizens, leaving many quarantined in centralized facilities or locked down in their communities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contrary to the common perception of the health code as a single app, this\u00a0paper\u00a0conceptualizes it as an interconnected technopolitical apparatus comprising four big-data-based, algorithm-driven projects: the health code (\u5065\u5eb7\u7801), travel card (\u884c\u7a0b\u5361), time-space companion (\u65f6\u7a7a\u4f34\u968f\u8005), and venue code (\u573a\u6240\u7801). As SARS-CoV-2 mutated, these projects were iteratively developed, promoted, and integrated into the health code system, constituting what I term \u201cviral iteration.\u201d Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across police stations, public hospitals, public health facilities, and communities, this paper highlights the technological and institutional logics underlying viral iteration. It demonstrates how technology corporations, public security systems, legal entities, and grassroots organizations\u2014which collectively constitute China\u2019s political, economic, and sociocultural infrastructures\u2014were co-opted into contact tracing and the broader zero-COVID apparatus. Building on literature regarding Chinese authoritarianism, this paper advances the concept of \u201cinfrastructural power\u201d to explain the party-state\u2019s ability to mobilize infrastructures for social control.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Xiaoling Chen is an interdisciplinary scholar with training in human geography and medical anthropology. Xiaoling is currently\u00a0an in-residence Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS), and a visiting scholar at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This talk is organized by Keiko Nishimura (Assistant Professor, School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Open Lecture Information \u30bf\u30a4\u30c8\u30eb\/Title: Viral Iteration: Political Economy, AI, and the formation of\u00a0Zero-COVID t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,1],"tags":[82,94,73,24,26,175,28],"class_list":["post-25709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","category-news","tag-events-en","tag-general-en","tag-research-en","tag-events","tag-general","tag-symposium","tag-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25727,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25709\/revisions\/25727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/fire\/sils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}