Aminda Smith and Fabio Lanza (Rail): The general view on China’s response to the pandemic, promoted by both Western media and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is that it was successful because of the enormous capacity of the state, its authoritarian or even totalitarian nature, its deep penetration into every aspect of social life, all characteristics that made that model of response inapplicable and/or unpalatable in the US or in Europe. In the book, you argue, quite convincingly, that the pandemic revealed instead the weakness of the state, and that the state was ultimately capable of dealing with the crisis by recognizing this weakness and delegating authority to local governments and ad hoc volunteer groups. This is a fascinating thesis, so can you explain how the state’s response to the pandemic was structured, what failed, and what ultimately worked?
Chuang: This is definitely a pervasive view, both in China and overseas. Part of the reason it was so effective at obscuring what really happened during the pandemic is that this image of the all-knowing state was already widespread beforehand. Maybe we can nickname it something like the “myth of totalitarian omnipotence.” But it’s important to remember that this myth is not just cultivated by the official organs of the party state in China to protect its interests. In fact, it’s even more avidly propagandized in Western media, for example, through the sort of dark Sinofuturist clickbait pieces constantly reporting on how everyone in China has a “social credit score” that determines their life choices, how facial recognition technology in every major city automatically tickets you for minor infractions, or how the government is planning to settle hundreds of thousands of its own citizens in far-off countries in Africa. None of those things are true, but an environment of constant bombardment with this sort of content naturally cultivates a mythic image of the all-powerful state.
This myth disguises two things. First, it obscures the state’s persistent weakness and the reality that, despite its glittering skylines, China is in many ways still a relatively poor country, especially in per capita terms. If you compare really basic measures—like total tax revenue that goes to the central government in China versus total tax revenue that goes to the federal government in the US—this quickly becomes clear. And in per capita terms the difference is of course magnified enormously. In another relevant example, China’s public per capita spending on healthcare is low even compared to other countries at a similar level of economic development, though it has been rising. This also means that state administration has been fundamentally shaped by the necessity of “ruling from a distance,” defined by high degrees of local autonomy, balkanization in command and surveillance structures, and a substantial latitude for corruption. This has historically given lower-level governments far more latitude and independence in China than they have elsewhere, and all of these features have actually been important to the development of a domestic capitalist class. Corruption, for example, is not necessarily “inefficient”—it’s a very normal part of capitalist development because it’s how capitalists are born when the market first opens and the rules of engagement are not well defined. It’s only after accumulation reaches a certain threshold that all these features become a hindrance.
Second, it also makes it difficult to properly understand that the ruling class in China has been engaged in a fairly extensive state-building project, which has been decades in the making but really began to accelerate under Xi Jinping. These two things are connected, obviously, since the necessity of state-building presupposes some sort of weakness. Accumulation had proceeded far enough that corruption, poor command chains, and the lack of reliable channels of information all began to become more of a hindrance than a benefit. The rapid build-up in local government debt, linked to stimulus infrastructure projects in the 2010s, was a clear sign of this problem. The anti-corruption campaign was aimed at addressing the issue at the higher levels, clearing out provincial tycoons who potentially posed a threat to the central government, and tidying up chains of command and channels of information from the top down. Alongside this were much more mundane things, like reforms in the methodology used by the National Bureau of Statistics and attempts to better integrate all sorts of public records. Similarly, various campaigns of repression against feminists, worker centers, and Maoist student groups also showed that there were similar attempts at integration within the larger policing infrastructure. People often don’t realize that China was a place where, for decades, it was fairly easy to avoid prosecution for many crimes by just moving to another city—at least until you garnered the attention of the central state—and where there was a frightening amount of leeway for local authorities to determine punishments, which also meant that it was easy to get out of trouble if you had connections in the local precinct. It’s still often true that local police won’t have access to simple, standard national databases, so they can’t always run your driver’s license, process your prints, or use your DNA, even if they might record this information locally. That’s quickly starting to change, but it’s a huge contrast with both what we are used to in many other countries and with the myth of totalitarian omnipotence, which of course assumes that these systems are more integrated and more pervasive in China than anywhere else.
So how does this relate to the pandemic? Well, the obvious example is that this local delegation of authority was disastrous. Despite all the myths of how effective this containment was, it’s kind of laughable when you think about it. After all, an outbreak with a clear and quickly identified geographical origin ultimately became a nationwide epidemic and then a global pandemic. How could this happen, when doctors had identified very early on that some new, deadly respiratory disease was spreading in the city? And when this was then clearly linked to a coronavirus? In large part, it’s because local officials rushed to suppress information on the outbreak as it was emerging from hospitals, including hiding information from the central state, all while making no moves to restrict travel, shut down businesses, or encourage mask use when these things would have been the most helpful. The book includes a long interview with friends in Wuhan, who offer a detailed timeline of events and explain what information was being provided on the ground throughout. They point out the strange fact, for example, that their friends in Shanghai knew more about the outbreak, at an earlier date, than many people living in Wuhan itself. Another thing that’s noticeable in this firsthand narrative is how there was this very sudden shift in policy, effectively overnight, where it seems that some higher authority must have finally stepped in to decisively implement the lockdown. That’s usually a sign that the central government has gotten involved, placing local officials under its direct command.
So, in many ways, we have to understand the outbreak as a huge initial failure—signaled by the fact that it became a pandemic that is still with us today—and which was only reigned in domestically by the coordinated effort of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, often voluntarily working alongside local authorities. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the epidemic would never have been contained if it wasn’t for the effort of these volunteers. At the same time, it was completely serendipitous that the outbreak largely occurred in a single city and, what’s more, on the eve of the Spring Festival, when everyone had already stocked up in the expectation that businesses would be closed. This minimized the immediate impact of the lockdown and allowed the central state to concentrate the vast majority of its resources on Wuhan (and, to a lesser degree, Beijing—where the central government is actually located). At the same time, the central government, through the Chinese CDC, understood the importance of opening up the flow of information, inviting international medical investigators, sharing research about the new virus immediately, and quickly creating easily-delegated standards for prevention that erred on the side of safety. Similarly, they stepped in to ensure that the food and power systems were being maintained. This is the level at which you can identify a certain success. Throughout, the government recognized its own incapacity and very effectively and rapidly delegated immense amounts of de facto administrative authority to the lowest level of governance, which included a whole array of administrative organs buoyed at every point by the efforts of volunteers.
Thank you
Chuang for the actually real state of China facts