Government as a platform Chinese style : the health code in China's rapidly developing digital ecosystem

This article suggests that the nature and the future of China's Health Code need to be understood within the overall digital ecosystem in China, which includes national strategies on informationalisation, big data, artificial intelligence and Smart Cities. These digitalisation strategies, introduced at different times, were established for a threefold objective: economic development, social governance and control and the delivery of public services. For the latter two objectives, China has taken a "Government as a Platform" (GaaP) approach to modernising social governance and to delivering public services. However, careful analysis of the policy and legal framework governing digitalisation strategies suggests that GaaP products in China are distinct in nature; they are largely outside legal constraints and always have social control as a core function. As such, the Health Code as a GaaP product will likely become a new kind of identification and real world, real-time tracking mechanism that delivers government services as well as social control simultaneously.