The grid management system in contemporary China: Grass-roots governance in social surveillance and service provision

Mittelstaedt, Jean Christopher

doi:10.1177/0920203x211011565

Cited by 40 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…63 In some cities, the SCS is connected to the "grid management system," which has operated for over a decade as a mechanism of precise surveillance and swift policy implementation at the grassroots level. Under the mechanism, urban neighborhoods and rural communities are divided into grids for the purpose of collecting information about the residents, providing public services, identifying risks to social stability, and enforcing corresponding measures (Bandurski 2018;Mittelstaedt 2021). With the SCS connected to the grid management system, the residents' credit records are automatically forwarded to government agencies that police the grid so that combined punishments and incentives can be carried out promptly (Shenzhen Special Economic Zone News 2018; Zhonghong Wang 2020).…”

Section: Dominance Of the Data Self Over The Bio-selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Datafication to Data State: Making Sense of China’s Social Credit System and Its Implications

Cheung¹,

Chen²

2021

Law Soc. Inq.

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We live in an age of datafication wherein nearly all aspects of our lives can be transformed into data and evaluated. The authors seek to make sense of the heightened datafication-enabled social control under China’s Social Credit System (SCS) by developing the concept of the data state. A “data state” is defined as a governance model enabling the state to comprehensively monitor, evaluate, and control its subjects through datafication, leaving them little room to defend their autonomy. We identify the multiple functions of the SCS in its development up to 2020 and analyze its inherent defects, including the decontextualized evaluation of individuals and the semi-automated imposition of disproportionate punishment. We argue that, if the SCS were to fully integrate its functions and connect to other data-driven governance initiatives, it would eventually allow the data self, carefully groomed by the state, to dominate the bio-self and turn China into a data state. Whereas China’s SCS may be unique and not easily replicated elsewhere, understanding its intricacies helps to enable the citizens of democratic societies to guard against the relentless growth of datafication that may result in an invincible and irreversible ecosystem for the emergence of a data state.

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Section: Dominance Of the Data Self Over The Bio-selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Datafication to Data State: Making Sense of China’s Social Credit System and Its Implications

Cheung¹,

Chen²

2021

Law Soc. Inq.

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“…At the provincial divisions of the UFWD transnational, digitized governance was exercised through the application of WeChat. Applying WeChat as a communication platform facilitated both direct liaison and potential monitoring, down to the level of individual Chinese migrants, in an overseas grid system resembling a domestic digital grid management system (Mittelstaedt, 2022 ; Pei, 2021 ).…”

Section: Organizing Care and Mutual Aid Groups Through Wechat In Zhej...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digitized diaspora governance during the COVID‐19 pandemic: China's diaspora mobilization and Chinese migrant responses in Italy

Ceccagno

Thunø

2022

Global Networks

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We explore how the Chinese diaspora state during the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020 managed to transform a severe health crisis into a geo‐political opportunity for transnational nation‐building through diaspora governance based on extensive use of social media technologies. By adopting a multi‐scalar perspective, we analyse the intertwined nature of top‐down and bottom‐up processes of the Chinese Party‐state's diaspora mobilization. Based on discourse and ethnographic analysis, we argue that China's diaspora governance exposed a new and strong capacity for extra‐territorial governance. We explore how discursive hegemony, social control and diaspora mobilization were achieved by widely employing the Chinese social media application, WeChat. We also contend that this was facilitated by the Italian government's and media's pro‐China attitudes to emphasize the importance of considering transnational embeddedness when studying the implementation and impact of interactive online technology for diaspora governance in an illiberal political context.

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“…A grid administrator, from the community and selected by the local community as part of the broader administrative system, monitors the community members while at the same time provides services to the local community. The grid-based strategy relies on a variety of techniques, such as information sharing, following-up evaluations of people's satisfaction levels, and liaising with politicallegal agencies such as the police, judiciary, and wider administrative systems [8]. The effectiveness of the gridbased strategy has been evaluated during dengue fever outbreaks in urban and rural settings [9], and its value has become more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of an innovative grid-based surveillance strategy to ensure elimination and prevent reintroduction of malaria in high-risk border communities in China

Ding

Wang³

et al. 2022

BMC Public Health

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Grid management is a grassroots governance strategy widely implemented in China since 2004 to improve the government’s efficiency to actively find and solve problems among populated regions. A grid-based strategy surveillancing high-risk groups, including mobile and migrant populations (MMPs), in the China–Myanmar border region has played an indispensable role in promoting and consolidating the malaria elimination efforts by tracking and timely identification of potential importation or re-establishment of malaria among MMPs. A sequential mixed methods was implementated to explore the operational mechanism and best practices of the grid-based strategy including through the focus group discussions (FGDs), comparison of before and after the implementation of a grid-based strategy in the field sites, and data collection from the local health system.This paper distills the implementation mechanism and highlights the role of the grid-based strategy in the elimination and prevention of re-establishment of malaria transmission.

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The grid management system in contemporary China: Grass-roots governance in social surveillance and service provision

Cited by 40 publications

References 9 publications

From Datafication to Data State: Making Sense of China’s Social Credit System and Its Implications

From Datafication to Data State: Making Sense of China’s Social Credit System and Its Implications

Digitized diaspora governance during the COVID‐19 pandemic: China's diaspora mobilization and Chinese migrant responses in Italy

Application of an innovative grid-based surveillance strategy to ensure elimination and prevent reintroduction of malaria in high-risk border communities in China

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