Governing with health code: Standardising China's data network systems during COVID-19

Abstract

Noting the infrastructural turn in platform studies, the article conceives China's health code system, Jian Kang Ma (JKM), deployed to manage the COVID-19 crisis as a new social infrastructure that manifests the symbolic and material power of the Party State. Using the platform walkthrough method and documentary inquiry, we unpack the structures of platform governance and identify actors of the power to appreciate the socio-political dynamics of platform algorithms. JKM's structural power is not monolithic in the name of the Party State but supports a process of structuration that operates across multiple actors, administrative bodies and, governing layers. JKM has centralised data systems through the building of a nationwide algorithmic standard of COVID-19 governance. JKM typified the political dynamics of deterritorialisation, a reference to the state's governing mindset of eradicating local variants of policy implementation and governing autonomy in China. The removal of local power in pandemic administration has led to the production of a unified national subject. Such a comprehensive approach begs for greater nuance and sophisticated knowledge about those indigenous logics that platforms and algorithms operate and are embedded in, thus contributing to de-westernising platform studies.