China's Management of COVID-19 (A): People's War or Chernobyl Moment?

In late 2019, a novel respiratory virus appeared in a province in central China. Government officials in Wuhan, Hubei province had to respond to the new virus in the shadow of the 2002–2003 outbreak of SARS in China and within the context of the country’s public health system and political institutions. After initial assurances that the human-to-human transmission was not occurring, Wuhan’s officials ceded control over virus response to central-level officials in late January of 2020, after which a national response to what would become COVID-19 began to unfold. President Xi Jinping asked local level officials throughout China to impose strict controls to prevent the spread of the virus in what would become known as a “zero Covid” approach. The case describes the historical and institutional basis for China’s response to the virus’s emergence over 2019 and 2020. How could the Chinese Communist Party mobilize society to limit the virus, and would the campaign to control COVID-19 cost the regime in other policy areas? What did the government’s response to the virus mean for its priorities and governing style?