7 - Conclusion — Authority in the Chinese Border Regime

Summary

Abstract

To contextualize recent developments, this book demonstrates how the Chinese border regime operates, specifically by differentiating its strategies of control according to a subject's geographic location (graduated sovereignty) and immigrant group (graduated citizenship). Following Ong, governmentality is shown to be territorialized in literal zones of exception. Further, the book demonstrates how authority over state territory is graduated: the regime rearticulates the border on both a regional and a local scale through establishing Special Border Zones that provide preferential policies, exceptional immigration procedures, and additional resources to integrate the local economy and facilitate crossborder trade. The border regime can also be shown to create metaphorical zones of exception if the border is understood as biopolitical as well as geopolitical.

Keywords: exception, border, Covid-19, Chinese government, biopolitics

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, China went into a lockdown, starting in the epicentre of Wuhan and extending to other provinces and localities where local and central governments deemed it appropriate (Plummer and Habich-Sobiegalla forthcoming). After this initial phase, the central government identified border areas as a potential risk and declared a state of emergency to avoid ‘imported cases’. While the emergency level in Beijing was lowered in April 2020 (Xinhua 2020), the level was increased in border areas (Global Times 2020). The Global Times reported that medical personnel were deployed to the Myanmar border area to conduct health monitoring, along with military reinforcements to constantly patrol the border. The threat was supposedly posed by not only ‘illegal’ border crossers, but also Chinese citizens returning from abroad. Accordingly, non-essential border crossings were prohibited, and the issuing of entry and exit permits in border regions was suspended (Global Times 2020). These examples illustrate how border areas and cross-border mobilities continue to be associated with danger and met with extraordinary force. COVID-19 has shown how mobilities that for decades have been considered key to these areas’ global economic integration are in fact securitized, with emergency measures able to specifically target border crossers. However, this situation has also thrown into relief how dependent governments are on their cross-border counterparts in terms of adopting equally appropriate measures and effectively monitoring people's health in the context of a health crisis.