(Minghui.org) With the pandemic still going on, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rolled out a smartphone app named “Health Code,” which automatically evaluates people’s health and determines if they should be quarantined or allowed into buses, subways or other public areas.
The app also shares users’ personal information with the police, including their names and recent locations.
This is a new step in the CCP's relentless surveillance of its citizens. In recent years, the regime has installed cameras everywhere, enabling facial recognition and associating everything people do with their real names.
Falun Dafa practitioners in China should pay attention to this app. While we mind our own safety, we should also understand the issue from the Fa’s perspective and not allow it to interfere with our truth-clarification efforts.
This “Health Code” system was developed by Alibaba. People are required to register for it on their smartphones with their personal and health information.
The app uses personal data along with their location histories to generate color-coded health ratings. Green indicates low health risk and allows access to public spaces. Yellow and Red show high or very high health risk, and the user would be subject to quarantine.
Users’ data are shared with the authorities, including police, and are used for social control. A Chinese IT professional in the big data field once said that personal data like this has always been the most valuable information for companies. In the name of controlling the pandemic, the CCP now has more incentive to introduce the color-coded health rating app and to collect people’s data.
In Heilongjiang Province, the “Longjiang Health Code” app went live on February 21, 2020 and was promoted by the provincial police agency. More than 14 million users have registered for the app by March 12, and it has been used in public spaces across the province nearly five million times.
Phone carriers also sent text messages to their customers every day urging them to sign up for the app earlier to prevent long lines when taking public transportation.
In the past 20 years, the CCP has never stopped its efforts to monitor Falun Gong practitioners and interfere with our telling people about the persecution.
Just five years ago, practitioners in China could still freely purchase cellphones and SIM cards without having to reveal our names or show our IDs. At the time, we had many ways to reach people, including making phone calls and sending text and media messages.
But with practitioners’ making strides in their cultivation and truth-clarification efforts, the CCP has also beefed up its efforts to block us. Things became more difficult when surveillance cameras were installed on every street in the country, cellphones were constantly monitored, and purchasing train/bus tickets began to require ID. Passwords or keycards became required to enter residential buildings, and facial recognition was adopted for roll call at work. All of this came in addition to the Great Firewall and spyware in computers. Surveillance basically covers everyone everywhere.
The situation requires us to cultivate better and be rational. I believe our abilities will also improve when we improve our xinxing. Master will also give us wisdom to make breakthroughs in the technologies that we use to clarify the truth to people.
When I reflected on this issue, I realized that we would have saved more people if we understood the Fa clearheadedly and grasped all the opportunities. If we had treasured the time period when we could buy cellphone cards freely, we would have done better in clarifying the truth and negating the old forces’ arrangement with our righteous thoughts.
Master told us:
“Dafa disciples are the sole hope for people's salvation” (“The Only Hope,” Hong Yin III)
“Anyway, I just want to tell you that, as Dafa disciples, you should know how enormous your responsibility is, and this is not a child’s game. This undertaking has already come to the last stage, and I am extremely worried, yet you still do not treat it seriously. In the end, however, it will be too late even if you cry. Everything in the human world was arranged purposefully so as to arouse people’s attachments; there are so many things that prevent you from being saved. You do not consider yourself a cultivator and follow along with those things?! You are the hope for all sentient beings, and you are the hope for lives in your area!” (“Fa Teaching at the 2016 New York Fa Conference”)
With our lessons learned, we should not be befuddled and passively accept the “Health Code” system this time around. Let's all pay attention to it and negate it through our righteous thoughts so that we can save more people.