Understanding Chinese government containment measures and their societal impacts

We urgently need to understand Chinese government measures to contain COVID-19. Rates of infection seem to be slowing in China, but they are accelerating worldwide. Given the apparent success of Chinese measures, other countries may consider adopting them. Yet we do not fully understand China’s measures — which extend well beyond health and clinical management — or their effects. Anecdotal evidence indicates that some measures created significant new problems, both for containing the virus (e.g. closing transport from the outbreak centre hampered the inward flow of medical supplies) and for members of Chinese society (e.g. quarantining those infected sometimes left dependents without carers). This project will use documentary policy and media analysis and fieldwork in four localities in China, to understand: the full range of measures taken by the Chinese government; how they were communicated to the population; their urban and rural societal effects (as well as their role in containing the virus); how the public responded to the measures; and whether public responses fed back to change policies. As the epidemic evolves in China we will regularly prepare short reports and online or in-person briefings that track policies and discuss evidence of their effects and arising ethical issues to create valuable resources for policy makers internationally.

This COVID-19 Rapid Response award is jointly funded (50:50) between the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research. The figure displayed is the total award amount of the two funders combined, with each partner contributing equally towards the project.

The WHO database of research on COVID-19 contains 589 studies, the majority of which are on virology, epidemiology and clinical management. Only two (Kavanagh 2020; McCloskey et al. 2020); discuss (but do not report research on) wider governance issues. Yet the Chinese Communist Party leadership’s response to the epidemic has been comprehensive well beyond clinical management. It has set up high level coordinating mechanisms across government ministries that have issued hundreds of policy documents setting out containment measures. In this way it has mobilized Party and government organizations across (for example) social care, transport, and policing that reach through local governments into every work place and community. It has used TV, print and social media to communicate measures with the public, while the public have used social media as well as self-organization to respond to measures whether by complaining and criticizing or by supporting and complementing government measures. This project will: systematically compile a database of policy documents (available from Chinese government websites) that set out containment measures as they are evolving through the epidemic; use text and computational analysis of newspapers and social media databases (Weibo Scope and WeChat Scope) we will purchase; and conduct local fieldwork (qualitative interviews) to analyse the societal impacts in urban and rural areas and responses on social media and (focussing on companies, and NGOs and citizens) in four carefully chosen localities (Hubei, Beijing, Guangdong and Anhui). The result will be important and novel resources mapping and assessing Chinese containment measures and their societal impacts, that will be communicated and updated regularly for national and international governments and organizations attempting to tackle COVID-19 around the world.