How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

The power of the powerless

At one point Old Wang’s son compares his father to a hen, frantical-

ly trying to protect chicks from an eagle. It is a revealing image. In

the end Old Wang loses, for he is thrashing around in the grip of a

much stronger beast. But he gains a concession, too: the city’s help

to stay and work in Wuhan for three more years, until his grand-

daughter, a good student, finishes secondary school. The price is

apologising in writing for his earlier defiance. Later a 

chengguan 

is

rebuked by a superior for suggesting that the Wang family are sin-

cerely grateful. Their emotions are not of interest, snaps the offi-

cial: “What we want is their obedience to our management.” 

This brilliant film explains a seeming puzzle: the hard men

who run China are capable of both brutality and pragmatism. The

key is their obsession with social stability. To buy peace, China’s

autocrats tolerate and even reward some forms of disobedience, so

long as the game ends with displays of deference to their authority.

Their goal, though, is the maintenance of power. Like an eagle ad-

justing its grip, the party is not guided by mercy. 

7

Keeping a grip

Chaguan

What a lowly, unpopular law-enforcement agency reveals about China’s version of dictatorship

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The Economist

September 5th 2020

49

1

F

or karina celis

and her fiancé James,

covid-19 could not have come at a worse

time. The couple planned to marry in May

and to move from London to Salisbury, a

small English city whose cathedral im-

presses Russian tourists. In July they had a

baby, their first. The wedding has been

postponed indefinitely. Moving house dur-

ing lockdown was surprisingly straightfor-

ward. But having the child proved a night-

mare of bureaucracy. 

In Britain pregnant women are often

given a paper folder containing their medi-

cal records, which they must haul to their

appointments. Ms Celis’s notes were not

transferred properly from her hospital in

London to a new one in Salisbury. She had

to start a new folder—and to repeat all her

appointments. Absurdly she and her fiancé

had to listen again to an hour-long talk

about what to do when expecting a baby. 

For Ms Celis, a software-engineering

manager, the lack of digitisation was

shocking. “At almost every appointment I

have been to, either in London or here, the

staff mentioned their struggles with tech,”

she says. Some maternity services have

moved online, but mostly health care in

Britain, as elsewhere, has stubbornly re-

sisted digitisation. The National Health

Service (

nhs

) remains among the world’s

biggest purchasers of fax machines. A plan

to create a unified digital system of pa-

tients’ records was abandoned almost a de-

cade ago, after £10bn ($12.5bn) was spent on

it. No further attempts have been made.

Neither health care nor Britain is un-

ique in relying heavily on paper. By pre-

venting face-to-face meetings and closing

the offices where bureaucrats shuffle docu-

ments, the pandemic has revealed how big

a problem that is. In many countries, it has

been impossible to get a court hearing, a

passport or get married while locked down,

since they all still require face-to-face

interactions. Registering a business has

been slower or impossible. Elections are a

worrying prospect. 

Governments that have long invested in

digitising their systems endured less dis-

ruption. Those that have not are discover-

ing how useful it would be if a lot more offi-

cial business took place online.

Covid-19 has brought many aspects of

bureaucratic life to a halt. In England at

least 73,400 weddings had to be delayed—

not just the ceremony, also the legal part—

reckons the Office for National Statistics.

In France courts closed in March for all but

essential services, and did not reopen until

late May. They are still not operating at full

capacity. Most countries have extended

visas for foreigners trapped by the pan-

demic, but consular services stopped al-

most everywhere, meaning that people liv-

ing abroad could not renew passports or

register births. In America green-card ap-

plications were halted in April; they re-

started in June. In Britain appointments to

take biometric details of people applying

for permanent residency ceased in March

and resumed only partly in June. 

Some applications cannot be delayed.

As Florida was locking down, huge queues

formed outside government offices to get

the paper forms needed to sign up for un-

employment insurance. In theory the state

has a digital system, but it was so poorly

constructed that many could not access it.

At the start of the pandemic the website

crashed for days. Even several months later

people trying to apply had to join a digital

queue and wait for hours before being able

to log in. When government offices in

Montgomery, the capital of neighbouring

Alabama, reopened, people camped out-

side, hoping to see an official who might

help with their claims. 

The digitisation of government