Covid-19 and Governance

Crisis Reveals

Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Haeran Lim, Habibul Khondker, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Haeran Lim, Habibul Khondker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367722500
• eBook ISBN: 9781000395303
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Covid-19 and Governance focuses on the relationship between governance institutions and approaches to Covid-19 and health outcomes. Bringing together analyses of Covid-19 developments in countries and regions across the world with a wide-angle lens on governance, this volume asks: what works, what hasn't and isn't, and why?

Organized by region, the book is structured to follow the spread of Covid-19 in the course of 2020, through Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. The analyses explore a number of key themes, including public health systems, government capability, and trust in government—as well as underlying variables of social cohesion and inequality. This volume combines governance, policies, and politics to bring wide international scope and analytical depth to the study of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Together the authors represent a diverse and formidable database of experience and understanding. They include sociologists, anthropologists, scholars of development studies and public administration, as well as MD specialists in public health and epidemiology. Engaged and free of jargon, this book speaks to a wide global public—including scholars, students, and policymakers—on a topic that has profound and broad appeal.

Asia

1

China’s fight against Covid-19

Domestic and external implications

Changgang Guo and Wenhao Fan

China is the first country in the world to report cases of Covid-19, and it is also one of the first countries to successfully control the epidemic. The outbreak of the Covid-19 coincided with the most important festival in China—the Spring Festival. The government carried out the most comprehensive, strict and thorough prevention and control measures in Chinese history. It caused vast social dissatisfaction and posed great challenges to Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) national governance capacity. With the initial epidemic turning into a global pandemic, there has been international propaganda accusing China of being responsible for the pandemic. The sudden changes in the international environment makes Chinese society re-examine the government’s anti-epidemic policy and even the whole system of China, and, to some extent, helps to subvert the rosy expectations and worship of Western society and Western media of Chinese society. There are so many voices in the world about China’s Covid-19 campaign. Attacks and accusations on China can be seen everywhere. But what is the reaction of mainstream Chinese society? This chapter will try to provide a Chinese perspective on China’s anti-epidemic campaign.

Measures to fight the epidemic

We can roughly say that China’s anti-epidemic campaign already ended at the end of April. According to the information released by National Health Commission, on March 18, there were no new local confirmed cases in China for the first time. By April 26, Wuhan City, the original Covid-19 epicenter, had all the hospitalized cases of Covid-19 cleared. On April 27, the Central Steering Group¹ left Hubei and returned to Beijing, marking decisive victory in fighting Covid-19 in Wuhan as well as in other cities of Hubei Province. This also marks the significant strategic achievements in national epidemic prevention and control.²

After that, a ‘new round’ of Covid-19 cases began to take place in Beijing on June 11, but the so-called ‘second wave’ turned out to be just a leaper, and it was soon successfully controlled after only 21 days.³ As Chinese netizens ridiculed, Beijing was ‘doing homework again’ to show it to some countries who believe that China’s anti-epidemic campaign is Draconian-style based on China’s ‘special’ political and social system, which cannot be copied in other places and cannot be used for reference by other countries. (See Tables 1.1 and 1.2)

Table 1.1 Covid-19 data of mainland China as of 24:00 April 28, 2020

Cumulative confirmed		Existing confirmed		Suspected		Cumulative cure		Cumulative deaths
82,858		647		10		77,578		4,633

Table 1.2 Covid-19 data for Hubei Province and Wuhan City as of 24:00 April 28, 2020

		Cumulative confirmed		Existing confirmed		Suspected		Cumulative cure		Cumulative deaths
Hubei		68,128		0		0		63,616		4,512
Wuhann		50,333		0		0		46,464		3,869

On June 7, China’s State Council Information Office published a white paper titled ‘Fighting Covid-19: China in Action’, which divides China’s anti-epidemic response into five stages:

• Stage I: Swift Response to the Public Health Emergency (December 27, 2019–January 19, 2020);
• Stage II: Initial Progress in Containing the Virus (January 20–February 20, 2020);
• Stage III: Newly Confirmed Domestic Cases on the Chinese Mainland Drop to Single Digits (February 21–March 17, 2020);
• Stage IV: Wuhan and Hubei—An Initial Victory in a Critical Battle (March 18–April 28, 2020);
• Stage V: Ongoing Prevention and Control (Since April 29, 2020).

Summarizing China’s anti-epidemic measures, the following aspects deserve special attention.

1) The establishment of a centralized and efficient national-level command. China’s top leadership responded to the epidemic very quickly. As early as January 7, when Xi Jinping presided over the meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, he put forward requirements for the prevention and control of the epidemic. China’s anti-epidemic policy in the initial phase was marked by three meetings of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), which were held on January 25, February 3, and February 12. Three consecutive meetings of PSC during such a short period is unprecedented in history. Especially the one on January 25, it was the day of the most important festival in China – the New Year’s Day of the Spring Festival, which was supposed to be the day for family reunion to celebrate the New Year. These three meetings formulated corresponding policies for the initial stage.

The Chinese government established the ‘Central Leading Group for Epidemic Prevention’ (January 25, the lunar New Year’s Day of China), headed by Premier Li Keqiang. A Central Steering Group was set up (January 27) with Vice Premier Sun Chunlan as the leader, it was responsible for guiding Hubei Province and Wuhan City to strengthen prevention and control work. Besides this, the central government built a government-level coordination platform named ‘Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council’ (JPCMSC, January 20). It was used to hold regular meetings to track and analyze the epidemic situation, strengthen the dispatch of medical personnel and medical materials, and adjust prevention and control strategies and key tasks according to the development and changes of the epidemic.

The State Council also set up the ‘Working Mechanism for Resumption of Production’, strengthened the overall guidance and coordination services for resumption of production, opened up the industrial chain and supply chain blocking points, and enhanced the kinetic energy of collaborative resumption of work and resumption of production. All provinces, cities, and counties across the country set up emergency command mechanisms headed by party and government leaders, and built an emergency decision-making command system with unified command, frontline guidance, and coordination and cooperation from top to bottom. For example, on January 20, Shanghai set up a leading group for epidemic prevention and control with the party secretary and the mayor as double leaders.

2) Effective coping strategies. In terms of specific coping strategies, the following series of ‘four’ plans have played a vital role. The first is the ‘four early’, that is early detection, early reporting, early isolation, and early treatment. Then there is the ‘four musts’, which literally requires that local governments must take in all the infected, cure all the patients, test all the suspected, and isolate all in need. Another one is the ‘four concentrations’, which means the concentration of patients, doctors, resources, and treatment. Under this circumstance, the Huoshenshan Hospital, Leishenshan Hospital,⁴ and 16 temporary treatment centers were built.

3) Mobilize the whole country. At the beginning of the anti-epidemic campaign, when the Chinese government decided to lock down Wuhan, a megacity with a population of 10 million, it actually made clear the national anti-epidemic strategy. That is, to contain the epidemic situation in Wuhan and Hubei as much as possible, to avoid the spread of the virus to other provinces, and then to fight the virus in Hubei and Wuhan with the concentrated strength of the whole country.

So we saw all-round support for Hubei Province and Wuhan City nationwide. It was the largest medical support action since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Patterns, confluence, regions
• Asia
• Middle East
• Europe
• Americas
• Africa
• Crosscutting themes
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Index