China and the Post-Pandemic World:  An Ongoing Project

China and the Post-Pandemic World

You don’t need me to tell you that the coronavirus pandemic has changed the world, or that it will likely change the course of history.  As of March 2021, more than two and half million people around the world have died from the disease, and while the rapid development of vaccines offers a glimmer of hope, we seem to be in a race against time as the virus mutates and attacks yet again.  Governments and economists are dealing with one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression.  Europe is floundering, as even those countries that seemed to have a handle on things during the first wave of the pandemic struggle.  The United States, under Donald Trump, shirked world leadership like a sinking ship casting off ballast, leaving much for Joe Biden to do.   If it is surely true that “everything will be all right” at some future point, the post-pandemic world will nonetheless look very different from the world we’re used to.

With some exceptions, (like Germany), East Asian countries—particularly South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong  Singapore, and Vietnam, but also China, despite the ragged start of its campaign against the virus—stood out in the initial phase of the pandemic for being able to “manage” the virus and limit its exponential spread, although none can yet claim final victory.  These countries achieved these limited successes through intelligent application of science and technology to public health challenges, and through timely and muscular state interventions at all levels of society.  If these East Asian countries manage the post-pandemic economic recovery better than Western countries—and why shouldn’t they?--they will emerge from the crisis with sounder economies, less debt, and less social division—East Asia’s position in the world will surely be strengthened.    

Among these countries, only China actively aspires to world leadership, an important part of the “China Dream” that is the subject of this web site.  As our readers know, Chinese intellectuals seeking a larger role for China on the world stage have claimed either that China has engineered a new version of socialism, or that premodern Chinese civilization possessed a fundamentally different, and better, version of international relations, which should be retooled and put to work for the good of humanity.  Neither of these claims finds much traction in the West. 

​Going forward, I have little doubt that Chinese intellectuals will use China’s “success” in fighting the coronavirus—at home and abroad—as an example of China’s scientific competence in the basic technologies that are remaking our future and in the government’s management and application of these technologies.  Imagine for example the impact if China had been the first to invent an effective vaccine against the coronavirus…

​For this reason, beginning today, I will search out and translate articles from the Chinese thought world treating the coronavirus and make them available on my site.  I hardly need note that to date, virtually our only access to Chinese discussions of these themes are bellicose statements from official media, often in response to attacks from the Trump admistration, chosen and translated by the Chinese themselves.  Otherwise, everything we read about China and the coronovirus comes from outside China. 

My focus will be less on the politics of the issue (the mainstream media will handle this), or on the scientific side (for those interested in this angle, a lovely site, in French, is available here), and more on how Chinese intellectuals incorporate the coronavirus into their competing discourses about China and the world.  I am interested in major statements about the meaning of the pandemic, but also in the way in which the theme of the pandemic becomes part of the larger “general conversation” of Chinese intellectual life.

N.B.  I welcome tips from readers regarding authors and texts to translate.  These can be in Chinese or English (or in any of my other languages, in decreasing order of fluency, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese).  [email protected].  Thanks!

Translations (in chronological order)


Liu Shao-hua
 
“Disease Names and Stigma in the Context of the Pandemic” (March 4, 2020)

Various Authors

"Post-Epidemic Recommendations from Confucian Scholars on How to Govern the Country," published on the website “Confucian Network” (March 20, 2020)

Byung-Chul Han

“Asian Countries are Managing this Crisis better than the West" (March 22, 2020)

Huang Qifan

"Three Thoughts on the Reconstruction of World Supply Chains in the wake of the Spread of the Coronavirus" (March 29, 2020)

Sun Liping 

"Fighting the Virus in China and the West" (April 9, 2020) 

Zhao Yanjing

“The Claims are Flooding in, and it is Urgent to Rebuild the Core Narrative of ‘China’s Fight against the Virus’” (April 10, 2020)

​Xu Jilin

“Cultural Factors in Different Models of Fighting the Coronavirus” (April 13, 2020)

Les pieds sur terre (podcast)

"The Coronavirus Seen from Elsewhere" (April 17, 2020)

Yao Yang 

“Is a New Cold War Coming?” (April 28, 2020)

Xiang Lanxin

"On Wolf Warrior Diplomacy" (April 30, 2020)

​Jiang Ruiping

“The Coronavirus Pandemic is Accelerating the Reshaping of East Asia” (October 20, 2021)

Jie Dalei

“Ideology and Sino-American Strategic Competition” (May 9, 2020)

​"Ideología y competencia estratégica sino-estadounidense"

Xiang Biao

“The Theory of ‘Concentrated Mobility’ and the ‘Gyro-Economy:’ Understanding Social Change in China through SARS and the Coronavirus” (May 21, 2020)

​Yuan Peng

"Political Gamesmanship and American Chaos" (June 2, 2020)

"The Coronavirus Pandemic and a Hundred-Year Change" (June 17, 2020)

“La pandemia de Coronavirus: Un cambio que solo sucede una vez por siglo” (June 17, 2020)

Deng Yulin, “Chinese Statism, the Transitional Nature of Xi Jinping’s Regime, and America’s Response” (July 15, 2020)

Qin Hui, “Globalization after the Pandemic:  Thoughts on the Coronavirus” (November 2, 2020)

Qin Hui, "La mondialisation après la pandémie :  Réflexions sur le Coronavirus" (November 2, 2020) 

Qin Hui, “Globalización después de la pandemia:  Pensamientos sobre el coronavirus” (November 2, 2020)

Xie Tao, "2020:  Sino-American Relations and U.S. Politics in the Time of the Pandemic”  (February 28, 2021)

Sun Liping, “Let’s Think it Through:  A Possible Picture of the Post-Pandemic era and the Problems We May Face” (January 17, 2022)

Cun Cun, “Two Years in the Lives of Front Line Health-Care Workers Fighting the Pandemic:  Between ‘Heroes’ and ‘Deserters’” (January 20, 2022)

Wu Jun, “Being Infected Does Not Mean Getting Sick; We Need to Calm the Covid Panic” (April 3, 2022)

Zheng Ge, “’Do We Really Have No Other Choice This Time?’ Frank Words from a Shanghai Father” (April 3, 2022)

Lü Dewen, “If the ‘Grassroots’ are not Solid, Everything Starts to Waver” (April 7, 2022)

Youthology, “Let Shanghai Be Seen, Let the Cry for Help Continue” (April 8, 2022)

Anonymous, “I Was Lucky Enough to Live through a Joke”  (May 8, 2022)

Luo Minmin, “The Epidemic Will Eventually End, But How Should We Deal with the Trauma of Social Depression?” (November 30, 2022)