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China mandated the widespread use of QR-based health certificates earlier this year. The system, which uses an electronic barcode to store a person’s travel and medical history, has long been known to help slow the spread of the virus.
The code issues users a color code based on their possible exposure to the new coronavirus. Colors are like traffic lights: green is the safest, then amber, and finally red.
“China has proposed a global mechanism on mutual recognition of health certificates based on nucleic acid test results in the form of internationally accepted QR codes. We hope that more countries will join this mechanism,” Xi said.
Xi did not explicitly say what kind of QR code app or system he was suggesting or who would design and implement it.
And given the growing concern of countries around the world about the use of Chinese technology in sensitive industries, serious doubts are likely to arise about how a Beijing-coordinated QR system would work.
The United States government has been pressuring its close allies in Europe, North America, and the Pacific to abandon Chinese 5G technology provided by communications giant Huawei, while the popular Chinese-made app TikTok has faced off against bans in India and the United States.
Stuart Hargreaves, associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Law, said that while there was nothing inherently invasive about a QR code, if it was used to store sensitive health information, privacy questions become “particularly important “.
“(For example) what information is stored in the underlying registry, how it is generated, where it is stored, who has access to it,” he said.
Hargreaves agreed that once vaccines for the coronavirus were available, an international “digital health passport” of some variety would be needed.
“For travel to come close to anything like what it was before Covid, then some kind of international standard that is easy to obtain, easy to use, secure and that protects privacy will be necessary,” he said.
The main problem with any international coronavirus app would be keeping data private, said Raina MacIntyre, director of the Biosafety Research Program at the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales.
MacIntyre suggested that a central database of information managed by the World Health Organization or a United Nations agency might be the least controversial way to create a Covid tracking app.
“(But) will people give their consent for another government other than their own government to access their data? That may be the price to pay for the trip,” he said.
