China mobilizes self-governing teams, volunteers in every ward, to carry out one of the largest social control campaigns in history.

The goal of this massive campaign is to prevent people from residential areas and villages from meeting and interacting with each other, except family members, to combat the raging Covid-19 epidemic.

The anti-Covid-19 campaign was based on this "fuzzy flag-style" grassroots force reminiscent of Mao Zedong's mass movement decades ago. This campaign basically delegates disease prevention to each self-governing team, to lead neighborhoods or villages to monitor residents.

Neighborhoods in some cities have issued travel cards to control how often residents leave home. Protect apartment buildings from renters if they have just returned from another province. The stations block people from entering the city if they can't prove they are living or working at the destination. In the countryside, the entrance to the village is guarded by groups of young men in red tape, covered with cars, tents or other obstacles.

Although China has many high-tech surveillance tools, the Covid-19 outbreak control measures are still largely implemented by hundreds of thousands of community employees and self-governing team members. They check people 's body temperature, record their travel activities, monitor isolation and the most important task is to prevent people from other regions from being able to carry nCoV.

Alleviation measures are affecting about 780 million people, more than half of China's population. Many of these people live far away from Wuhan, where the Covid-19 epidemic began.

China uses a "grid" management system, divides the country into very small communities and assigns supervisors to each community, thereby strictly controlling large populations. Across China, neighborhoods and villages issue separate travel regulations, meaning the number of people affected may be even higher. Policies are different in different places, paralyzing activities in some localities, while others are less restrictive.

Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for a comprehensive "people's war" to put an end to the epidemic. However, travel restrictions have prevented workers from returning to factories and businesses, putting pressure on the Chinese economy. When measures to control the movement of people were entrusted to the grassroots level, some became extremely close to the extreme.

Lich Tinh's husband, a 40-year-old associate professor of sociology at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, recently suffered a fracture of herringbone but she was unable to take her husband to the hospital, because the neighborhood only allowed one family member to leave. leave home every day.

"After the epidemic was publicized, the central government put enormous pressure on local officials," Lich said. "That has led to regional competition, and local governments have shifted from being too reserved to extremes."

Zhejiang Province, with a population of nearly 60 million, has 330,000 supervising staff. Hubei Province deployed 170,000 people. Guangdong Province mobilized 177,000 people, Sichuan 308,000 people and Chongqing 118,000 people.

The government also combines massive self-governing manpower with technology to track people at risk of nCoV infection. Chinese state-run mobile networks allow subscribers to send messages to hotlines to create a list of provinces they've recently visited.

Last week, at a high-speed railway station in Yiwu, workers wearing protective clothing asked passengers to send a text to report their location before being allowed to leave. The application of a military electronics manufacturer allows Chinese citizens to enter their names and identification card numbers to see if they are in contact, sitting on the same plane, train or bus with a nCoV.

It is too early to determine whether China's strategy will be limited to translation. With the large number of new cases being reported every day, the government clearly has a reason to restrict people from traveling and interacting with each other. But experts say extreme measures can be counterproductive, making it harder for infected people to escape and to control the disease.

In Zhejiang, one of China's most developed provinces and where Alibaba and other technology companies are located, many say they are not allowed to enter their apartments in Hangzhou, the provincial capital. , after returning from elsewhere. They are required to present guarantee documents from the landlord or employer, otherwise they must be "out of the way".

For 20-year-old Ton Na Dat, who visited family in Wenzhou, a coastal city in Zhejiang, the fear of disease turned into mandatory isolation. This month, when Sun had chest pains, his mother advised her to go to the hospital. She did not have a high fever but the hospital gave her a test, all negative for nCoV.

Even so, when she returned to the apartment, she was required to be isolated for two weeks. She was added to a WeChat group to report her body temperature and location twice a day. "I'm concerned they have too much information," Ton said.

Not all measures cause discomfort. In fact, many people in China happily accept restraint measures. They order groceries online and work from home if possible. Some neighborhood leaders also help the people a lot.

Bob Huang, 50, a Chinese-American living in Zhejiang, said volunteers in his neighborhood hunted a man who stayed overnight to drink alcohol, violating regulations on frequency of people. may be out. However, they also delivered fast food to an isolated family.

Huang is not restricted because he or she is given a special travel document by the landlord. He drove to some places to distribute masks to his friends. Some buildings did not allow him to enter. Other places saved his information.

A nearby village takes a more special approach. "They ask questions in the local language, if you answer in the local language, they can enter," Huang said. Because he could not speak the dialect, Huang had to wait outside, but the villagers were friendly. They gave him a folding chair, offered him smoking and did not ask for an ID.

Several other regions of China also impose strict policies. Hangzhou banned pharmacies from selling pain medicine to force people with symptoms to seek medical treatment. Nanjing City requires anyone taking a taxi to show their identity card and leave contact information. Yunnan Province wants all public places to show QR codes and people in and out are required to scan the code.

Many places ban crowded people. Police in Hunan Province this month broke a mahjong game when they spotted 20 players inside.

When local governments decide such policies themselves, the campaign against Covid-19 in China is like a patchwork picture. "These measures can be quite arbitrary," said Chu Tuan, a Chinese historian at Essex University in England. "A perfect paper plan often turns into local improvisation solutions."

Officials seem to realize that some localities have gone too far. This month, Chen Guangsheng, deputy secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, said that some places imposing blunt measures such as "trapping" people in the house is "inappropriate".

Central officials over the weekend called on towns and villages to eliminate unnecessary obstacles, ensuring a smooth transport of food and supplies.

In Hangzhou, the 29-year-old accountant's apartment building, Chang Anh Tu, originally banned anyone from returning from another place. Later, the ban was amended to include only people returning from Hubei Province and the cities of Wenzhou and Taizhou of Zhejiang Province, where there were many cases of nCoV infection.

"Prohibiting everyone who left the city is an unrealistic treatment," Zhang said. "There are so many. Some need to get back to work."

However, many people are not assured of easing control too quickly. Zhang Shu, 27, worried that his parents and neighbors were too calm about the disease, although self-governing officers often drove around the village near Wenzhou, loudspeakers asking people to stay home.

"The average person is starting to feel that the situation is no longer terrible," Zhang said. "They were too hasty."