After COVID: Between Biosecurity and Political Security in China’s Urban Governance

This article traces the lasting transformations in China’s urban grassroots governance system wrought by three years of zero-COVID policy: increased information gathering and surveillance activities conducted by Residents’ Committees (RCs), as well as their integration into the hierarchical bureaucratic system. To demonstrate these transformations, we employ a Foucauldian lens to distinguish between emergency policies introduced during the pandemic that govern public health, which we term “biosecurity,” and longer-term policies whose object of governance is public order, which we term “political security.” Using in-depth fieldwork data alongside analysis of relevant legislation, we show that the winding down of biosecurity measures in early 2023 have laid bare an enhanced political security framework, which now forms essential parts of RCs’ daily governing tool kit. We situate these political security measures within two broader changes to China’s post-COVID administrative structure: the delegation of governance tasks from RCs to grid workers, cementing RCs within the administrative hierarchy; and the creation of the Society Work Department of the CCP Central Committee, placing focus on regular home visits and conflict prevention. We conclude that a major legacy of pandemic governance in China is a more powerful system of grassroots bureaucracy capable of the microgovernance of citizens’ private lives.