Guard governance in China’s everyday urban life

Urban authority is often encountered not through law or policy, but through mundane decisions about entry, waiting and movement. In Chinese cities, such decisions are frequently made by security guards positioned at the thresholds of residential compounds, campuses, commercial complexes and other managed spaces. This Comment conceptualises these practices as guard governance: a form of threshold authority exercised outside formal structures of public authority. By linking work-unit gatekeeping, marketised gated communities, outsourced labour and zero-COVID access control, the article shows how guards have become key intermediaries between property, publicness and everyday urban life. Guard governance reveals how ordinary urban order is produced through small acts of discretion over entry, movement and conduct.