Newsletter No.4 February 21, 2020
Prospects & Perspectives
The limitations and adverse effects of the Chinese model of governance are clear for all to see. If the CCP cannot find a way to implement institutional reform, COVID-19 could well sound the death-knell for the CCP’s authoritarian system. Picture source: 龐興雷, 《中國政府網》,
Governance in Relation to the Spread of
COVID-19
By Wen-hsuan Tsai
N ovel Coronavirus (hereafter referred to as COVID-19, the name
Newsletter No.4 February 21, 2020 given to it by the World Health Organization) continues to spread rapidly across China and the entire world. On 1 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a second emergency meeting and announced its decision to classify COVID-19 as a “public health emergency of international concern.” According to data from China’s National Health Commission, by 21 February, there had been 75,465 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China, 2,236 of which had resulted in death. Worldwide, across twenty-seven countries, including China, 76,712 cases had been confirmed and there had been a total of 2,246 deaths. The gravity of the epidemic is evident from the fact that over 80 cities in China have adopted “lock-down” (fengbishi guanli 封閉式管理) measures.
Status Discussion A deliberate cover-up by local officials during the early stages of the epidemic is the main reason COVID-19 has spread so rapidly. The first case was reported to have been detected in Wuhan on 2 December 2019 (although it could have been even earlier). Wuhan’s Health Commission, however, only declared an epidemic on 31 December, emphasizing that it had yet to find any “substantial evidence for person-to-person transmission.” Many people doubted the veracity of this statement and suggested on social media that the virus did indeed transmit “from person to person.” At the beginning of January 2020, a number of Chinese citizens were investigated and punished for posting this opinion online, among them a doctor in Wuhan, Li Wenliang (李文亮), who has since died of the disease.
The epidemic began to attract the attention of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) top leadership when it continued to spread. On 20 January, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping issued an edict calling for the epidemic to be “decisively curbed.” On 26 January, the CCP established a “Leading Team for Responding to Novel Coronavirus (Central Government),” headed by Premier Li Keqiang, with the aim of mobilizing all national resources to combat the epidemic. These measures, however, came too late. Nearly two months had passed between the detection of the first case and the implementation of nationwide anti-epidemic measures. This delay reveals tangible faults in the CCP’s policy-making system and its model of governance.
The fundamental problem is that, under Xi Jinping’s totalitarian regime,
Newsletter No.4 February 21, 2020 regional officials are structurally incentivized to report good news and suppress bad news. When COVID-19 was being detected in Wuhan, Chinese New Year was fast approaching and the CCP was faced with the prospect of large numbers of people returning home for the holiday. If local officials had declared an epidemic at this juncture, they would most likely have been held accountable for the results of their action and may even have been dismissed from office. On 27 January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang (周先旺), explained that it had not been possible to declare an epidemic earlier because authorization had not been granted by the higher level authorities. Reading further into Zhou’s statement, we find clues suggesting that China’s policy response to the virus is based on a specific “political angle,” namely the maintenance of overall social stability. Whether or not a major incident is divulged to the public depends on its potential to disrupt social stability. Therefore, higher level authorities (in particular the Party Central) must take all factors into consideration before authorizing such a disclosure.
In other words, some observers are of the opinion that, although the outbreak of COVID-19 is a natural catastrophe, its rapid spread is a man-made disaster. In particular, the rigidity of the CCP’s institutions results in a lack of communication between the upper and lower levels of the government. Xi Jinping only started to address the epidemic when it could no longer be covered up and had the potential to develop into a major political disaster that would undermine the stability of the CCP’s rule. The CCP has always dealt with major incidents in society from the standpoint of the need to “maintain stability.” In an epidemic like the present one, tackling social instability takes precedence over public health, leading to inhumane treatment of patients and the use of compulsory quarantine measures, all of which are reminiscent of the way the CCP detains dissidents and petitioners.
Conclusion Over the past few decades, the CCP’s autocratic handling of social problems consistently has been at the expense of the welfare of its own citizens and those of other countries. In 2003, it was SARS; in 2008, it was the contaminated milk scandal; in 2019, it was swine flu; and this year, it is COVID-19. In all these crises, the CCP has resorted to autocratic decision-making methods entailing the suppression of facts and the swift arrest of dissidents, followed by an assessment of the incident’s potential to affect
Newsletter No.4 February 21, 2020 social stability, and finally, a decision on whether or not to go public and how the announcement should be made if so. In the face of an epidemic like the present one, the CCP’s efficient centralized power base may indeed provide some advantages. Nevertheless, as a regime that does not allow any supervision by civil society and is not restrained by a regulatory political opposition, the CCP’s entire leadership, with Xi Jinping at its center, must take full responsibility for this epidemic and give serious consideration to how it can reform China’s woefully inadequate medical and public health systems.
Finally, this epidemic makes Xi Jinping’s much vaunted catchphrases—the “Chinese Dream,” “Chinese Governance,” “the Two Centenaries,” and “Managed Modernity”—sound particularly hollow. The regime’s handling of COVID-19 has damaged China’s international image seriously and has raised doubts about the validity of the “China model.” After twenty years of breakneck economic growth, the limitations and adverse effects of the Chinese model of governance are clear for all to see. If the CCP cannot find a way to implement institutional reform, COVID-19 could well sound the death-knell for the CCP’s authoritarian system.
(Dr. Tsai is Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica)
Editor’s Note: the views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy or the position of the Prospect Foundation.
The Prospect Foundation is an independent research institution dedicated to the study of cross-Strait relations and international issues. The Foundation maintains active exchanges and communications with many think tanks of the world.
Prospect Foundation No.1, Lane 60, Sec. 3, Tingzhou Rd., Zhongzheng District Taipei City, 10087, Republic of China (Taiwan) Tel: 886-2-23654366 Fax: 886-2-23679193 http://www.pf.org.tw