[Book review] Is China\'s COVID-19 success an authoritarian victory?

\"What Is China\'s Post-Pandemic Future?: Alternative Civilization and Governance\" explores various discourses in and around China over the country\'s success story in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic

People spend time at a market in Wuhan, China, on March 28, 2021. Wuhan had its lockdown lifted on April 8, 2020. (Yonhap News)

Two people sit on a riverbank in December 2020 while looking over the Yangtze River in Wuhan, China. (Yonhap News)

Chinese President Xi Jinping poses with medical and health authorities during a meeting to commend role models in China's fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, China, on Sept. 8, 2020. (Yonhap News)

Chinese citizens tell a television reporter in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that they "have nothing to worry about because of the [Chinese] government." (provided by Cum Libro)

A Chinese man looks at a public announcement poster that reads, "Those who don't share the fact that they have a fever are enemies of the people." (provided by Cum Libro)

A Chinese woman holds a sign that reads, "can't do, don't know" to criticize the Chinese government's persecution of the late physician Li Wenliang, who was forced to say "can do" and "[I] know" when asked by the Chinese government to stop "spreading false news" and if Li knows his actions are criminal. (provided by Cum Libro)

The cover of the book \"What Is China\

The COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the globe has also had the effect of igniting a debate over political systems. Different countries have adopted different models to respond to the virus, and while the situation is still very much ongoing, some sense has emerged of how the countries have scored with their control measures over the past year.

At the center of all that is China, which is both the country where the pandemic started and the one rated as having succeeded the most with controlling it. As of Thursday, the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China stood at 90,547, with 4,636 deaths.

In contrast, the "advanced nations," including the US and the countries of Europe, have experienced clear failures, failing to cope with massive numbers of diagnoses and deaths since the earliest stages of the pandemic.

This has prompted a debate over political systems, governance, and even civilizations, with some observers pointing to a "failure by Western civilization" and others criticizing "authoritarian approaches that disregard individual liberty and rights."

img src='http://flexible.img.hani.co.kr/flexible/normal/970/627/imgdb/original/2021/0426/6116194240622348.jpg' alt='People spend time at a market in Wuhan, China, on March 28, 2021. Wuhan had its lockdown lifted on April 8, 2020. (Yonhap News)' /

"What Is China's Post-Pandemic Future?: Alternative Civilization and Governance" is a collection of essays by Chinese and other authors exploring possible directions forward for China after its pandemic experience. The 12 contributors include South Korean experts on China (Ha Nam-seok of the University of Seoul, Park Woo of Hansung University and Cho Young-nam of Seoul National University), Chinese scholars (Yao Yang of Peking University and Wen Tiejun of Renmin University of China), and ethnically Chinese scholars active both in China and elsewhere (Chu Yun-han of National Taiwan University and Zheng Yongnian of the Chinese University of Hong Kong).

Editor Baik Young-seo, chairperson of the Segyo Institute and an emeritus professor at Yonsei University, explained that he "gathered essays from in and around China that show as diverse a spectrum of viewpoints as possible."

bPeople’s war/b

Contributors writing within China saw the country's disease containment success as the result of a "Chinese model of governance" that differs from the West's. In particular, they sought to turn the matter into a discourse over civilizations.

An example of this is the so-called "people's war" discourse. A people's war represents a system of full-scale national mobilization that, in the editor's words, "bears aspects of collective defense and collective control, running from top to bottom from the level of individuals, home and basic regional units to all levels of the government."

In short, it is a system that transports the Chinese Communist Party's 20th-century experience battling imperialism into the 21st century battle against contagion. The discourse is a response to claims from outside critics that China's disease control success is owed to "authoritarian" restrictions on human rights.

"Most Western commentators merely attributed China's disease control process to 'authoritarianism,' without having any way of knowing the capabilities of the people's war under the national mobilization system," the eminent Chinese scholar Wang Hui wrote last year.

img src='http://flexible.img.hani.co.kr/flexible/normal/970/647/imgdb/original/2021/0426/291619424062196.jpg' alt='Two people sit on a riverbank in December 2020 while looking over the Yangtze River in Wuhan, China. (Yonhap News)' /

In this book, that stance is represented by Xie Maosong of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy. He maintains that China succeeded in containing the virus thanks to its "large country system," a combination of the power of a large society and large government not seen in the West.

He also underscores the difference between Chinese culture's focus on treating all people equally ("yi shi tong ren" in Chinese) and the Western concept of "survival of the fittest."

Xie further argues that "places influenced by Chinese and Confucian culture — East Asia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore — have handled [the pandemic] better than the Western countries."

Yao Yang voiced fears of a "post-China" phenomenon of intensifying negative views toward China. His approach is one of attempting to achieve a compromise, arguing that the Confucian ideas emerging as a new narrative in China today "do not completely preclude Western liberalism."

bShortcomings in authoritarian disease control measures/b

In contrast, other authors expressed alarm over growing authoritarianism. Early on in the COVID-19 outbreak, Chinese authorities focused on silencing reports and public opinion on the contagion; since then, they have implemented disease policies under what amounts to a wartime approach, disregarding individual rights in the process.

Reports of the pressure placed on the late physician Li Wenliang for "spreading false news" triggered an outpouring of criticisms toward authorities even among the Chinese public.

People without smartphones have been unable to use transportation or hospitality services because they cannot present a QR code to verify their health status. In Zhejiang Province, the requirement to present QR codes using the payment platform Alipay has resulted in situations where visitors without Alipay have been unable to disembark from aircraft.

img src='http://flexible.img.hani.co.kr/flexible/normal/970/646/imgdb/original/2021/0426/5216194240621567.jpg' alt='Chinese President Xi Jinping poses with medical and health authorities during a meeting to commend role models in China\'s fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, China, on Sept. 8, 2020. (Yonhap News)' /

img src='http://flexible.img.hani.co.kr/flexible/normal/970/525/imgdb/original/2021/0426/471619424062002.jpg' alt='Chinese citizens tell a television reporter in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that they \"have nothing to worry about because of the [Chinese] government.\" (provided by Cum Libro)' /

In the book, Qin Hui, a Chinese University of Hong Kong professor who represents a liberal perspective, shares a blunt critique of the "people's war" discourse.

He argues that the matter of the "low priority of human rights" — the claim that China's "harsh" quarantine and tracking measures have been more effective than the democratic states' more "tolerant" approaches to disease containment — demands more objective examination.

While certain "adjustments" of the relationship between freedom and survival become unavoidable in a war or other emergency, to what extent is it appropriate to view a pandemic as a "war"? Qin argues that the priority should be less on "ranking" systems than on reflecting on the issues present within the different systems.

In his view, China should be focusing more on respecting human rights under ordinary circumstances, while the West should work to resolve the flaws laid bare amid the emergency situation.

The South Korean contributors attribute China's disease containment success to various factors, including the authoritarian system formed over its history, its improved state control capabilities, and its experience with the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak.

According to this argument, the success is not a result of the authoritarian system per se, but of no other country being able to match China's combination of social mobilization capabilities with the state authority to implement measures while smoothing over popular discontent.

Instead, the South Korean experts focus more on what tasks lie ahead for China.

Park Woo writes, "The COVID-19 [pandemic] has shown that authoritarianism fails both to meet the public's expectations and to win support from the international community, yet to overcome its problems, the Chinese government has marshaled the approach it is most accustomed to, namely increased authoritarianism."

img src='http://flexible.img.hani.co.kr/flexible/normal/960/720/imgdb/original/2021/0426/6516194240621149.jpg' alt='A Chinese man looks at a public announcement poster that reads, \"Those who don\'t share the fact that they have a fever are enemies of the people.\" (provided by Cum Libro)' />