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The ultimate question is: “How can we truly empower the aged by solving both access and usage difficulties?” Learning from America, we want to provide a similar peer-to-peer education with diverse course content which has been proved to effectively bridge usage gaps. However, instead of adopting its online study system, China should utilize radios as a medium to reach the most seniors.
The significantly low positive rate in China proves its health QR codes’ effectiveness in preventing Covid-19 from spreading. The health QR codes refer to a project started in early 2020 in Ant Financial, a sister company of e-commerce giant Alibaba. People put their names, IDs, travel history, health condition, etc., into Ant’s wallet app, Alipay, through smartphones, and get health QR codes. The codes change colors — green, yellow, or red — to indicate whether one is free to travel, stay home quarantine for 7–14 days, or must quarantine for at least 2 weeks. The mechanism behind is to record and define areas where infected people stayed or passed by as dangerous zones through GPS. If a healthy person stays in those areas long, he/she is likely to be infected, thus, turning from “green” to “yellow” or “red” and needing to quarantine. The QR code keeping all potentially infected people quarantined cuts off the respiratory illness’ transmission route through human close contact, thus helping prevent the Covid pandemic from spreading. The scope that this system covers is impressive, being used in 200+ cities. Almost every public space, including schools, airports, hotels, and groceries requires green codes. As a result, China nearly has no infectious rate. From February 2020, until two years later before the Omicron variant with higher transmissibility hits, according to WHO data, on average, China’s weekly confirmed cases are less than 1000, and the total confirmed cases are 174,486. Compared to its 1.402 billion population, this result is astounding. Such a low positive rate is almost the same as if Covid-19 has not happened to China. In contrast, during the same time period without health QR codes, America with 329.5 million people had a total of 77,808,032 confirmed cases. Therefore, health QR codes undeniably protect China away from the pandemic. This is important because, from an individual level, fewer people suffer from uncomfortable symptoms or death, and from a society’s view, life can go back to normal.
However, the health QR code policy is not perfect because it forgets the elderly population who have difficulties accessing new technology due to financial burdens. The process of signing up for a QR code heavily relies on mobile phone use. A phone is not enough — only smartphones capable of internet access count. The problem is, smartphones are expensive. When average monthly pension in Beijing, the capital and most developed city in China, is 4,365 yuan ($685), average smartphones cost $363 in 2021. Who would spend half of their limited budget just for a phone, when they need the money to eat, pay for nursing homes, medical care, etc.? Those living in rural areas and earning far less than $685 would impossibly afford a smartphone. Therefore, it makes sense that the percentage of elderly population accessing smartphones is low. According to Shige Qi and fellow researchers, 65.5% of Chinese aged 60 years and above use phones, but only 14.3% use smartphones. In other words, about 80% of all Chinese elderly could not access proper technology, not to mention health QR codes. When most places to prevent Covid from spreading require QR codes, the elderly are constrained in mobility. I could never forget the news when an elderly citizen stopped by subway station staff cried out “没有的事，谁给我？你没给我。[What is the health e-code? I don’t know about it. No one gives it to me]”. We don’t know what he is desperately heading to — it could be his partner needing help in the hospital miles away or there is no food at home. What we do know is that right now he could not go, by taking subway or any public transportation that is often the most convenient and cheapest for the elderly, because he does not have a phone or a health QR code. This old man reminds us that preventing Covid does not mean depriving old adults’ rights. Regarding these, some argue to get rid of the whole health QR code system. Without QR codes, no one troubles. However, they are wrong for undervaluing the code. Without the system to track and quarantine those needed, people move freely which could lead to more infections. If aged people get positive, they are at greater risk to experience severe symptoms and die! Therefore, to protect people as a whole, we should keep the health QR code. Instead, what we should consider is how to benefit everyone in the QR code system.
Understanding the urgency to solve technology access difficulties, Chine provides paper health QR codes which unfortunately couldn’t solve deeper issues of digital devices usage barrier. Electronic health QR code is no longer the only way to track and prove whether someone is healthy. In Shanghai province since August 2021, aged people over 60 can get their health QR code printed “at district administrative service centers or community service centers”. Such social infrastructure upgrades save aged people from the financial burden of having to buy a cell phone. As the printed code is valid for 180 days, the elderly are free to travel as wanted. The access barrier has been removed. However, if we look closer, paper QR codes are provided to the elderly by young staff printing through “a super self-service machine integrating Shanghai’s e-governance platforms”. This approach is just to let the young people do technical parts for old people. What if there are no staff in district administrative service centers at 6:00 a.m. — when many elderly usually go out — to help them get printed copies? When seniors are alone with self-service machines, smartphones, or any new technology, explored by Song, Qian, and Pickard, they are often “confused, vulnerable, and struggled”. Why? Because they “do not have much experience in using digital technologies” and need technical support. Having access to new-tech devices is great, but only when one knows how to use them — and currently the elderly don’t know. Therefore, we should also target seniors’ usage barriers and fundamentally bridge them. What could we do?
Looking at other nation’s solution, proper education is the key because it equips seniors with adequate skills in a more understandable way which empowers them to depend less on others. Proper education here is different from standardized lectures with all information predesigned like how children learn at school. As seniors have different educational backgrounds and how much computer skills they want to gain are different, diverse course contents are needed and America accurately maintains this. On GetSetUp, “the largest and fastest-growing online community of older adults”, the elderly can join community social events, guest lectures on issues they are interested in, and live classes. With unlimited choices, the aged can take courses based on needs and interests. Going beyond, I want to focus on its live classes that the elderly who are experts in their field teach their peers. This is important because the elderly know their needs the best. Unlike younger generations who learn computer skills on laptops, people in their 60s or 70s mostly learn through teachers’ handwriting on blackboards. When young teachers teach, they usually explain based on laptop learning experiences that seniors cannot relate to. By comparison, aged peers, teaching based on similar learning experiences, make learning easier. To put it another way, what GetSetUp advocates for is peer-support learning, which has been theoretically proved to equip and empower the elderly. As stated in Lindsay, Smith, and Bellaby’s research, given no access barriers, after 6-months of informal learning that combines self-learning, peer support, and proper technical assistance, compared to control groups without peer support, seniors are better in computer skills. This suggests education’s power in equipping people. Also, within the experimental group, 35% more of them (86.5%) actively use search engines than before. This data implies how education empowers independency. Imagine one piece of information they are looking for can be only found online. With more technical skills than before, more of them can search by themselves, instead of waiting for others like the young population for help. In other words, it is proper education that provides essential skills and empowers them for taking initiative. Basically, GetSetUp with diverse course ranges and peer-to-peer education successfully empowers the American elderly to overcome digital device usage barriers. Is this also a perfect solution for China? In terms of what and how to teach seniors — in other words, the content — yes. However, problems exist in the medium that carries contents. As stated above, GetSetUp is online. When less than one-fifth of Chinese aged 65+ own a smartphone to access the internet, they could not reach the platform. Without access capability in the first place, they are not able to learn, nor escape from usage inability. Therefore, GetSetUp’s system is great, but some modifications are needed. While keeping the part of letting aged people teach various topics, China needs it to be on a more accessible medium.
Since most seniors are familiar with it, radio is the best medium choice for China to hold GetSetUp-like peer-teaching diverse course contents, so that both access and usage barriers are bridged. Unlike smartphones, most people aged 65+ already own or have experience using radios. Such popularity links back to Chinese history. According to my grandma who lived her 75-year life in rural areas, in the 1950s, people were so poor and struggled for survival, so “能买点别的东西的都是有钱人呐 [owning items outside of survival necessities becomes a symbol of wealth]” that everyone desired. The items often wanted are called “三大件” — watches, bicycles, and radios. Once the economy recovered in the 1970s, even rural families with a little extra cash all rushed to buy these items, not to say wealthier urban people. At the end of our conversation, my grandma shared that “到80年代左右基本家家户户都有三大件 [about 1980s, almost every family owned watches, bicycles, and radios]”. This implies that the radio coverage rate in China is already high after the 1980s. Thomala shows a similar conclusion — “In 2020, 99.38 percent of the population had access to radio”. Almost everyone has access to radio, so seniors wouldn’t face the same access difficulties as when they deal with smartphones that prevent them from studying digital devices and health QR codes. If unluckily the remaining 0.62% who don’t have access to radio are also aged people, radio is cheaper than smartphones, which lessens the financial burden. The logic is: even people in the 70s could own a radio, after 50 years, people nowadays are generally richer and would not be extremely short of money to buy a radio. In short, being easy to access, radios are effective means to provide educational programs and empower the whole Chinese elderly population. As for education programs, they are broadcast content. Currently targeting health QR code use under the Covid-19 pandemic, we could invite seniors who are confident using health QR codes to share. They don’t need to be academic scholars or industrial experts but neighbors, family friends, or anyone are willing to tell experiences and help their peers. By doing so, we adopt GetSetUp’s key in advocating peer education. Ultimately, the most effective way of connecting aged people to new technology is a Chinese-special radio program with all older adult presenters.
