China’s Pandemic Response: How Xi Jinping’s Autocratic Regime Helped China Beat the Virus
By: Lily Nelson
Tags: Covid 19 Crisis, Coronavirus, Pandemic, Covid 19, China

Opinion

As several countries struggle to reduce COVID-19 cases, provide sufficient testing, and stabilize their economies, the Coronavirus pandemic has exposed the strengths and weaknesses of institutions across the world. Critically, the pandemic has compromised the two most critical factors for determining a state’s effectiveness: capacity and autonomy. As O’Neil explains, capacity is a state’s ability to carry out basic tasks of providing security while balancing freedom and equality (O’Neil 2020). Similarly, autonomy relates to a state’s ability to wield power independently of public or international actors. The strength of these factors have declined across the world as several powerful nations have demonstrated low state effectiveness in dealing with the pandemic, remaining in critical condition with firm quarantines and surging cases (Han et al. 2020). Both the U.K. and U.S. governments failed to promptly respond to the virus, initiate and maintain an effective lockdown, and develop rapid covid testing. In Russia, Putin ignored the virus, later blaming government officials for the repercussions. Adversely, China’s quick and effective covid response has made the country a model for success.

China maintains its state effectiveness as it swiftly closes hospitals, lifts the lockdown, and ensures a booming economy. With scholars claiming Xi Jinping has “won” the coronavirus crisis (Huang 2020), China’s success has called for an investigation into what factors are contributing to this result. Though not the only factor contributing to China’s state effectiveness, a possible explanation for China’s outcome is the power its authoritarian regime grants Xi Jinping, China’s president. Easily able to mobilize citizens and enact policies, Xi Jinping neither has to prove nor justify his decisions to a court or his people. Instead, he can freely act upon what he deems to be the greater interests of the country. This context brings into question: What has Xi Jinping’s reaction to the coronavirus revealed about the regime type’s impact on covid? By analyzing how China’s autocratic regime allowed for Xi Jinping to respond effectively and swiftly through an economic, political, and scientific lens, it’s clear: while China’s autocracy is not the only reason for its success, it has been conducive to its effectiveness when handling the virus.

From an economic perspective, China’s authoritarian structure allowed Xi Jinping to swiftly reframe the economy amidst covid by first, reshaping its market through manufacturing and selling COVID relief products and second, shifting away from domestic consumption. First, autocracy’s centralized power gives Xi Jinping the ability to reshape China’s market as he controls business growth by distributing investments and funding. For the pandemic crisis, this meant Xi Jinping gave enterprises investing in and selling products such as masks, hand sanitizers, and other COVID-relief products, quick loans and various subsidies (Bradsher 2020). Their centralized regime aids this ability to efficiently allocate these resources; in contrast, a possible explanation for the U.S.’s and U.K.’s struggle to support its businesses and allocate funds could be their decentralized structure, influencing governmental delays and financial exemptions (Cecille Joan Avila and Shafer 2020). The second way China’s autocracy allowed the country to adapt its economy is by permitting Xi Jinping to freely shift away from domestic consumption and towards infrastructure investments.

As nonessential services such as restaurants and hotels have struggled during the pandemic, Xi Jinping stabilized China’s economy by building highways, rail lines, and reshaping transportation (Bradsher 2020a). By shifting away from domestic consumption to create more jobs and invest in itself, China created a stronger foundation to rebuild the economy as covid progressed. While China’s economy was affected by covid, many of the economic implications faced by other countries were alleviated by the power Xi Jinping’s autocratic leadership granted him over the economy. However, China’s regime has not only influenced state effectiveness from an economic perspective but through a political one.

Xi Jinping was able to freely and swiftly enact covid policies by forming the covid-releif plan,”fang kong,” which translates to “prevention and control” (Stasavage 2020). As Xi Jinping does not require citizen or governmental approval to implement policies, he easily enforced an extreme state lockdown, financially rewarded citizens for reporting people who broke the quarantine or did not wear masks and established welfare systems for families unable to work. Critically, these measures avoided the lengthy legislative processes many democracies must undergo (Stasavage 2020), and as time is critical in stopping the spread of covid, this ability to quickly enact policies only aided China’s state effectiveness. However, another vital element to consider when analyzing China’s political response is the lack of privacy policies.

China’s autocracy has drastically mitigated all concepts of privacy as an ultra-surveillant state (Qiang 2020). The absence of privacy laws played a critical factor in dissolving the virus’s effects as drones, cameras, and secret police surveilled the public to ensure its citizens followed lockdown protocol, socially distanced, and wore masks. These measures provided that Chinese citizens abided by its covid policies. Critically, the implications for objecting to these orders included fines, incarceration, or scoldings by drones. In February, a video of a woman walking without a mask went viral when she was approached by a drone commanding her to wear a mask and go home (Ng 2020). These surveillance tactics and strict policies, along with the lack thereof, not only mitigated the effects of the coronavirus but ensured its citizens followed them. Accordingly, China’s authoritarian regime’s influence on state effectiveness is also represented through a scientific lens.

Since the SARS epidemic, China has invested in its public health infrastructure. Over time, this focus has granted China the title of second in scientific production, surpassing the US (Robbins 2020). To achieve this result, Xi Jinping’s autocratic leadership allowed him to freely allocate funds to college STEM programs and field research (Silver and Cyranoski 2020). This investment has been a critical factor in China’s covid preparedness, leading China to be one of the first countries to develop a rapid covid test and effectively mitigate the virus (Hornyak 2020). Apart from using past epidemic experience to guide their response, Xi Jinping has also invested in big tech and artificial intelligence to combat the virus. By funding tech startups and similar programs, a new automated response to the pandemic was created; a hospital in Wuhan, China, was staffed by robots to serve over 20,000 patients. This effort relieved tired healthcare workers and helped slow the transmittance of covid to various workers (CNBC 2020).

After looking at Xi Jinping’s COVID responses through economic, political, and scientific perspectives, it can be deduced that a contributing factor to China’s state effectiveness during the pandemic has been its autocratic regime. This model allowed Xi Jinping to quickly respond to the virus by shifting the economy toward covid relief products and away from domestic consumption, swiftly enacting policies and mobilizing citizens, and investing in healthcare infrastructure and science. However, even though China has shown how authoritarian regimes can succeed, these regimes can alternatively suppress information and exacerbate the problem. When the virus was first detected, China ignored it and failed to warn the rest of the world. Similarly, Putin ignored the virus, and his delayed response resulted in a weak economy and a frustrated population (Meyer, Ilya Arkhipov, and Bloomberg 2020). While recognizing the strengths of an autocratic government when handling pandemics, it’s also important to caution against the possible implications of this structure.