China has developed a massive network of human surveillance to identify threats, which is estimated to involve around 4.5 million contractors — or about one person for every 300 Chinese citizens.

Communities in China are divided into “grids,” which are assigned “grid managers” by authorities. The system was first tested in Beijing in 2004, and adopted nationally in 2013. With the coronavirus epidemic, the role of “grid managers” has become further emphasized.

In January, a Hong Kong cross-border truck driver was evicted from Shenzhen after he was found to have contravened public health measures. The case was a reflection of China’s surveillance capabilities: a grid manager caught the driver “lingering for more than an hour outside his declared workplace.”

China has nearly 4.5 million grid managers, who “verify information, promote policy, resolve disputes and serve the public,” the state-owned newspaper Legal Daily reported last year.

The managers are the community’s “first line of defense” against the pandemic, as the grid had become the basic unit for enacting policies, the paper added. More than 85,000 part-time grid managers were mobilized in Beijing to conduct door-to-door surveys, while 170,000 were mobilized in Hubei.

Guangdong province, for example, was divided into 140,005 grids with 177,384 grid managers, mainland Chinese media reported last February.

Apple Daily reporters found that the grid managers were classified as contractors, not civil servants. They also needed to pass physical and written tests as well as an in-person interview to get the job.

A worker in Guangdong told Apple Daily that the system differed from place to place, and the grid manager’s presence was not strongly felt. However, he had heard anecdotally that grid managers in places like Xinjiang were much stricter.

Grid managers were part of the Chinese Communist Party’s structure to maintain stability, said veteran China watcher Willy Lam.

Their role was similar to “resident committees” during the Cultural Revolution, which would monitor phone activity and foot traffic for each apartment block, Lam said.

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