China: “What Kind of Government Is This?”

• Published in: Asian perspective 2020-07, Vol.44 (3), p.549-560
• Main Author: Clemens, Walter C
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cities; Contagion; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Decades; Deng Xiaoping; Digital technology; Disease control; Drugs; Government; Hair; Hospitals; Military bases; National income; News; NGOs; Nongovernmental organizations; Presidents; Quarantine; Rites & ceremonies; Social responsibility; Treasury bonds
• ISSN: 0258-9184; 2288-2871; 2288-2871
• DOI: 10.1353/apr.2020.0024

“What kind of government is this?” Bella Zhang, a 25-year old perfume saleswoman with tinted blue hair asked as she sat outside a Wuhan hospital in February 2020 with her mother and younger brother, all three hooked to intravenous drips attached to a tree branch. Since the hospital had no free beds, the whole family was quarantined at home, but visited the hospital for medication. An epidemic could begin in any country, but not every political regime would labor to suppress news of its emergence (although the US president and Iran’s top leaders downplayed its dangers).1 One saving grace for China was that its system could build new hospitals nearly overnight and regulate population movement to limit contagion. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; Turning and turning in the widening gyre The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. The book contains sixty figures and tables illustrating such variables as “Increase in Chinese National Income Generated by One Unit of Fixed-Asset Investment, 1981–2012” and “China’s Gini Coefficient in Comparative Perspective.”