China's Engagement with Global Health Diplomacy: Was SARS a Watershed (original) (raw)
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Globalization and Health, 2024
suggests a complex tale of globalization and public health, in which the relationships among the major actors of global health governance-in particular, the US, the WHO, and China-have rapidly evolved against the background of contemporary globalization processes. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the contested politics of global health governance [4-6], we still don't know enough about the dynamics of domestic pandemic responses, or about the relationship between the politics of those responses and the politics of global health governance, both of which have changed significantly in recent decades. Focusing on the trajectory of China's pandemic responses in the context of globalization, this article explores three cross-border infectious diseases-HIV/ AIDS, SARS, and COVID-19-that constitute important moments in this country's engagement with global
História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos
B etween 2002 and 2003, a coronavirus epidemic broke out in China and spread across the world, infecting more than 8,000 people and causing approximately 10% of this contingent to die. In the months when the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was active in China, severe sanitary measures were adopted, such as quarantines, isolation, the closing of public places, the use of large-scale diagnostic tests, and the construction of isolated health units in record time. The world has witnessed very similar protocols in China's current fight against the SARS-Cov-2 epidemic in 2020. The 2002-2003 epidemic drastically changed the structure of China's health services. And the book Infectious change: reinventing Chinese public health after an epidemic, by Katherine A. Mason, published in 2016 by Stanford University Press, was written to bring to light and analyze these transformations and their impacts on public health in that country. In this groundbreaking piece of ethnography, Mason shows how changes to the Chinese public health system were driven not only by the SARS epidemic, but through massive investments to create the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC). Envisaged as the equivalent of the American CDC in Asia, the Chinese organization was designed not only for epidemic prevention and epidemiological control, but also as a major center of research in the area. Oriented by reflections from health anthropology and insights from the social studies of science, Mason anchors her arguments on the ideas of knowledge production and scientific Reinventing Chinese public health after a SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)/Coronavirus epidemic Reinventando a saúde pública chinesa após uma epidemia de SARS
Masking fears: SARS and the politics of public health in China
Critical Public Health, 2014
This paper examines shifts in attitudes to mask-wearing during and in the aftermath of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 2002-2003. In the PRC, as throughout East Asia, face masks were widely adopted as a practical preventative measure. However, the ubiquitous image of the masked Chinese citizen in both the Chinese and international media also acquired a political resonance. Masks were equated with the Party's attempts to censure dissent and 'cover up' the epidemic. A perceived lack of government transparency, at least in the initial phase of SARS, recalled earlier public health incidents and episodes of public dissension, notably the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Drawing on samples of qualitative data from a broad range of Chinese and English language sources, the paper shows how debates about mask-wearing in China during SARS became intertwined with political concerns, reflecting a tension between the Party's liberalizing policyepitomized by the country's admission to membership of the World Trade Organization in December 2001and real anxieties about the consequential 'fall-out' of this new openness. The paper concludes by arguing for an approach to public health which incorporates a critical capacity, particularly in relation to the ways in which political contexts may determine responses to epidemic episodes.
SARS in Canada and China: Two Approaches to Emergency Health Policy
Governance, 2007
China and Canada addressed the transnational 2003 SARS outbreak within a common, multilevel network of public-health expertise. The two countries deployed distinct public-health strategies, and faced distinct levels of resistance. This article addresses this comparison. During this epidemic "state of exception," both countries adopted emergency policy instruments and overall policy styles. However, Chinese emergency boundary policing corresponded better to everyday experience than did hospital-based screening in Canada, and China's policing targeted collectivities where Canada emphasized individual case tracking. While Canadian efforts were smaller in scale and faced infrastructural deficiencies, prior campaigns to address endemic health problems formed a basis for compliant popular subject positions. Power/resistance relations and their cultivation during endemic conditions must become the center of analyzing effective approaches to emergency planning. In many Pacific Rim countries, the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis abruptly enhanced the power of public-health authorities, provoked debate about emergency preparedness, and triggered health policy reforms. This article compares and analyzes the SARS experiences in China and Canada as moderate "states of exception" (Agamben 1998; Schmitt 1976) and considers their subsequent impacts. We present two key claims. The first is that these experiences expose essentially different "policy styles" (Howlett and Ramesh 2003; Richardson 1982) or "techniques of rule" in the Foucauldian sense. The second is that in the long term, such emergency measures tend to threaten the benefits of open, accountable, and transparent governance. We draw on several sources for our understanding of the SARS crisis: (1) local, national, and international media coverage; (2) official SARS Web sites of the World Health Organization (WHO), of China's Ministry of Health, of Canadian and Ontario public-health agencies, and of one major Toronto hospital; and (3) forensic studies (Campbell et al. 2004;
Evolution of Health Provision in Pre-SARS China: the Changing Nature of Disease Prevention
China Review-an Interdisciplinary Journal on Greater China, 2007
A major player on the world stage, China influences nearly all spheres of international interaction. The global community was reminded of this fact in 2003, when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) became the first epidemic of global scope in the 21st century. The disease, originating in China’s Guangdong Province, spread to over thirty countries, killing more than 800 people while negatively impacting international trade and transportation and inspiring fears of a global pandemic. Following the outbreak, China’s disease prevention and control mechanisms came under fire by international public health experts who had hailed China’s pre-reform health care system as a model for reducing incidences of infectious diseases in developing countries. The China Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 2007), 81–107 Jonathan SCHWARTZ, PhD is professor of Political Science at SUNY New Paltz. His primary research focus is on comparative studies of epidemic response effectiveness in China, Taiwan and t...
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2009
In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic began its spread across China. This potentially devastating infectious disease constituted a crisis for which the Chinese government was unprepared. Assessments of China’s initial response to SARS pointed to numerous failures that were largely attributed to the inability of the state to provide sufficient public health support (Canadian Department of National Defense 2003). Perhaps unexpectedly, the negative assessments of China’s SARS response changed over time, reflecting China’s success in ultimately bringing under control a disease once expected to spread across the country, infecting millions. What enabled China to turn around what seemed to be a rapidly deteriorating disease control situation? Did non-state actors play an important role in China’s effective SARS response? If so, what does the SARS case teach us about the impact of crises on relations between the state and civil society organizations in the realm of...
SARS, Greater China, and the Pathologies of Globalization and Transition
Orbis, 2003
Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
Health Policy and Planning, 2010
Since the SARS epidemic in 2003, the international community has urged Chinese leaders to do more to address infectious diseases. This paper looks at two cases in which the Chinese government securitized infectious disease (SARS and avian influenza) and examines the pros and cons of securitization. It is argued that the reactive mobilization involved in a securitizing move runs counter to the preventive risk management strategy needed to address infectious diseases. Although the Copenhagen School favours desecuritization as a return to normal practices, in the Chinese cases desecuritizing moves proved detrimental, involving cover-ups and restrictions on activists pressing for greater information. The article begins by examining the contributions of the Copenhagen School and sociological theories of risk to conceptualizing the security challenges that pandemics pose. Although analysis of the cases of SARS and avian influenza gives credence to criticisms of this approach, securitization theory proves useful in outlining the different stages in China's reaction to epidemics involving reactive mobilization and subsequent efforts to return to politics as usual. The second section examines securitizing and desecuritizing moves in Chinese responses to SARS and avian influenza. Each case study concludes with an assessment of the consequences for health risk management in China. The reactive mobilization implicit in Chinese securitization moves in the two cases is contrasted with the preventive logic of risk management. A third section draws out the implications of these cases for theories of securitization and risk. It is argued here that when securitization has occurred, risk management has failed. Although Copenhagen School theorists see the return to politics as usual-what they call 'desecuritization'-as optimal, this turns out to be far from the case in China during SARS and avian influenza, where the process involved retribution against whistleblowers and new restrictions on health information. In conclusion, the article argues that alternatives to securitization, such as viewing health as a global public good, would require a prior commitment to risk management within affected states.
CHINA AND THE WESTERN WORLD IN PANDEMIC ERA – A CONTEMPORARY ANALYSIS
IKSAD Publications, 2022
The rapid and deadly spread of the coronavirus has created chaos worldwide. It has already led to more than 14 million confirmed cases of sickness and more than 600,000 lives. Since the great depression, it has caused the most severe economic recession globally, connecting massive unemployment and bankruptcies. The situation is panicky and will panic due to insufficient cure or vaccine. Pandemic damages are traumatic and sorrowful and will be comparatively short-lived. Society will be influenced by its long-term consequences. China's international relations in contemporary global scenarios, particularly with the western world, are one of these long-term consequences. As an emerging economy whose rise has been a central focus of international attraction or nervousness since the last 20th century, China has been a significant character in explaining the current pandemic scenario. Regarding information, the first sign of the problem came at the end of 2019, when a group of pneumonia cases arose in Wuhan Chinese city. The first reaction was to hide the news. Still, when it became clear the problem was severe and deteriorating, Beijing took the extreme degree of locking down the city of Wuhan with its estimated 11 million inhabitants. But the virus was already spreading to other parts of the world. The article's objective is to focus on China's current relations with Western countries in the context of the COVID-19-pandemic and its significance. The paper aims to realize China's position in the post-COVID world. The methodology has been conducted through documentary analysis. The feature question is, what are the options for stabilizing international relations in the context of China and the western world?
Post-covid China: ‘vaccine diplomacy’ and the new developments of Chinese foreign policy
Place Branding and Public Diplomacy
The COVID-19 pandemic that hit the world in early 2020 changed it unimaginably. China was forced to face many new challenges at the international level, not only those related to the handling of a health crisis. After overcoming the first wave of the pandemic, China had to focus on foreign policy and public diplomacy efforts to secure its main interests. As the world continues to struggle with COVID-19, China is using the pandemic for its own foreign policy purposes, mainly by using vaccines as a new foreign policy tool. The purpose of the research is to investigate the position of recent Chinese 'vaccine diplomacy' with reference to its traditional and contemporary public diplomacy and foreign policy strategies. The investigation has a qualitative character and is based on a content analysis of official press conferences conducted by the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs.