A Comparison of Covid-19 and Other Emergencies in Chinese Governance

• In Event: Institutional Change and Political Control in China

Abstract

As the original epicenter of global coronavirus pandemic, China’s Wuhan City was placed under the most severe lockdown seen across the globe for 76 days. Unlike in past emergency response situations in China, government-organized Residents’ Committees (RC) and shequ or community-based organizations played a highly prominent role in enforcing the lockdown and providing public services and maintaining public order. This article investigates the role of RC and community organizations in emergency response in China through case studies of the government’s response to the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, the 2016 flood in Wuhan, and the 2020 coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. Drawing on databases of media reports and individual accounts, I argue that the administrative and coercive power of these organizations stem from their spatiality—from being embedded in gated residential communities, maintaining contact and familiarity with residents, and having control over physical structures. During earthquakes and floods, when the physical space that community organizations operate in and derive their power from is changed and destroyed, these organizations’ role in emergency response diminishes. However, when facing an infectious disease outbreak, in which physical space is not changed and the situation demands enhanced spatial controls, community-based organizations take the lead.

Author

• Huan Gao