HIV, SARS, and COVID-19: Understanding the changing and contentious politics of pandemic responses in China
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Overview
Overview
abstract
The current COVID-19 pandemic has increased attention to the effects of globalization on public
health. However, we still don’t know enough about the relationship between the politics of
globalization and the politics of pandemic responses, both of which have changed significantly
in recent decades. Focusing on HIV, SARS, and COVID-19 as cases of global public health crisis,
this article explores the dynamics of China’s public health responses throughout its
engagements with contemporary globalization processes. Attending to changing politics at
domestic, international, and global levels, I argue that China’s response to each of these
pandemics has been a complex combination of global health politics (including securitization of
infectious diseases and neoliberalism), international relations (especially with the US), domestic
politics (e.g., the political stability of the party-state), and systematic oversights (at both
domestic and global levels). The HIV pandemic of the 1990s and the international collaboration
that ensued facilitated both China’s participation in global health governance and its interfacing
with the West; its Zero-COVID strategy up to the end of 2022, on the other hand, reflected its
pursuit of both socio-political stability under Xi’s leadership and a differential world order that
nonetheless parallels the Western-led one. The widening divergence of pandemic responses in
a time of ubiquitous global health crisis has further reinforced uncertainties about global health
governance, as well as about the future of globalization.
