EVERY day Zhong Zhenhua patrols a small network of streets in a well-heeled part of northern Beijing, where a dozen apartment blocks house about 3,000 people. In recent weeks he has been paying attention to local construction workers to make sure that their building materials do not block people’s way. Mr Zhong says he also likes to call on local residents—particularly sick or elderly ones who might need help. The aim is to visit at least one household a day, he explains, though sometimes he can fit in up to five.

Mr Zhong is a “grid manager” operating in part of Huayan Beili Xi Community, a middle-class residential area near the capital’s iconic “bird’s nest” Olympic stadium. He has been recruited by the local government to watch over a “grid” of streets in the neighbourhood, solve problems if possible and pass bigger ones up the chain of command for higher-level attention. The grid system of ensuring order in urban areas was pioneered in Dongcheng, a central district of Beijing, in 2004. By 2017 about 60% of China’s cities were using it in some form, reckons Zhou Wang of Nankai University in Tianjin, up from 45% in 2015.

China has a long history of community control involving civilians. In the 16th century a system known as baojia was devised that required households to take turns to monitor each others’ activities. Modifications of it have persisted for much of the country’s history since then. Communist leaders have been especially fond of deploying local residents to keep a lookout on street corners.

Under Mao, city dwellers were assigned to workplace “units”, or danwei, which were responsible for providing them with housing and telling the authorities about potential troublemakers, including people considered disloyal to the Communist Party. As a result of economic reforms that China launched in 1978, the danwei system has mostly vanished. Every urban area still has a “neighbourhood committee” (its leaders are “elected” by residents from among party-approved candidates). But such organisations have only a shaky foothold in the newly built districts that are home to many millions of young commuters. Luigi Tomba of the University of Sydney says the emergence of new grassroots forces, such as profit-driven property-management companies and nimbyish homeowners’ associations, has been complicating the work of the party-backed committees.

Grid, locked

The aim of grid management is to tighten control again. The government wants this partly because so many urban residents are recent migrants from the countryside or other cities. Long gone are the days when local officials would know, or be able to check quickly, every resident’s background. They want to use the grid system to curb crime, help solve residents’ complaints and watch out for hazards such as fire risks and pollution. They also want to make sure they can forestall any unrest long before it has a chance to break out. Many residents want greater security, too. They often blame migrants from other areas for crimes such as robbery and rape.

The system involves dividing neighbourhoods into grids covering a few streets. A manager such as Mr Zhong is assigned to each of them. The authorities mobilise volunteers, mostly local pensioners, to help. Retirees have long been the backbone of neighbourhood-watch schemes. During big political meetings or around the time of sensitive anniversaries large numbers of them stand on pavements wearing red hats and armbands (see picture). In some rural places residents are being issued with set-top boxes that allow them to monitor feeds from security cameras in the comfort of armchairs, according to state media. In regions where officials are worried about the possibility of large-scale or violent unrest, such as Tibet and Xinjiang, the grid system has been used as part of a vast extension of surveillance measures aimed at keeping secessionists and terrorists in check. In some parts of Xinjiang waiters and shop assistants have been issued with clubs, body armour and hard hats to help them perform security duties when required.

Officials in Mr Zhong’s grid say that one in seven local residents plays some role in public-security work. One of his duties is to look into the problems they report (they often do so using WeChat, an instant-messaging app). He says he also asks volunteers in each apartment building to suggest families who might benefit from his house-calls. Cui Baoxiang, a recently retired businessman who has lived in the area for three decades, is part of a team of 120 party members who mount a regular lookout. For a while there was a rota system for security patrolling, he says, but now every team member knows to keep an eye out whenever they are outdoors. Mr Cui’s work includes approaching strangers who enter the neighbourhood to find out who they are and whether they need any help—or whether they might pose some kind of threat.

The authorities’ definition of what is threatening is sweeping. It might include someone engaging in unauthorised religious activity, or involve a person from the countryside who has arrived in the capital to petition the central government about an injustice in their own hometown. Local governments hope that grid staff will get to know their patch well enough to be able to detect problems while they are small and easy to handle, says Samantha Hoffman, a visiting fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Increasingly sophisticated databases aim to make it easier for higher-ups to tap into information logged by grid staff and search it for patterns.

The impact of the grid system is difficult to gauge. The government says that public satisfaction with law and order has risen from about 88% in 2012 to more than 95% today. But those figures are no more reliable than the country’s notoriously dodgy crime statistics. All this attentiveness may be a help to some people with minor grumbles that are easy to solve. But for others with more complex complaints the effect may be the opposite. Officials now find it easier to identify problems earlier and put pressure on people to keep quiet about them.