Restoration of mobility through mobile health: the digital health code as a technology of governance

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic is challenging the existing global economic order and the risk of infection is reordering the way people interact. Communication technologies have provided new ways of managing social activities and maintaining social order. The digital health code is a technology developed to digitize health and mobility via mobile devices; its objective is to restore the flow and control of the physical body in a post-pandemic society. This paper examines the digital health code in post-pandemic China. Through analysis of its technical structure, government policies and the use of the digital health code, the paper explores how this social biotechnology reconstructs the notion of health, how it restores mobility and in doing so how it strikes a balance between biosecurity and capital accumulation in post-pandemic societies.