19 May 2020, NIICE Commentary 4754
Dr. Ceren Ergenc & Dr. Onur Bahcecik
When the word coronavirus is mentioned, the first perception that comes to mind is ‘confinement’. The first measure that China took following the outbreak of the virus was locking down the city of Wuhan, and Hubei province, and putting them in quarantine. China’s neighbors, then, immediately ‘closed’ their land borders while the other countries ‘closed’ their doors to China by canceling flights. After the increase in cases of coronavirus, Italy has been criticized by its neighbors in the European Union since it refused to withdraw voluntarily from Schengen for a temporary period. Once the virus appeared in Iran, Turkey immediately closed its land and airspace borders.
Human mobility today is at an unprecedented scale given the increasing availability of transportation and the interconnectedness of business, education, entertainment and commercial networks of the world. Closing borders is not the most efficient way to stop the spread of the virus given the length of the incubation period and virus mutation potential. We do not actually reduce the risk with lockdowns of localities where there is a hike in cases numbers, or by confining ourselves to our homes. If the pandemic is a global problem, then why are we closing the borders?
Pandemic outbreak is an issue of global public health and needs long-term solutions. In the absence of long-term measures, the local authorities resort to closing of borders as the most immediate measure to take. However, in the long run, erecting walls does not protect us from the pandemic, rather, it leaves us alone and confined with our “local and national” viruses.
Allocating Research and Development resources to develop vaccines for contagious viruses is not profitable enough for the major pharmaceutical companies, as it is a large but short-lived market unlike the one for cancer drugs that is both large and permanent. Besides, since corona-type viruses constantly mutate like influenza, developing vaccines takes a longer time. That’s why, governments or international organizations should promote research and development. Most importantly, pandemics should not be taken as unexpected security crises but as a part of global long-term public health management. Long-term measures against the pandemic should not be left to the pharmaceutical industry alone. Improving the quality of life of individuals, especially the vulnerable and disadvantaged groups who have limited access to healthcare, should be prioritized. In short, the pandemic is primarily a developmental concern, not a security one.
As of now, governments have closed their borders as a pandemic prevention method, instead of allocating additional funds for applied medical sciences and public health services. They, therefore, manage in saving up on a major budget item and consolidated their domestic legitimacy by tapping into the xenophobia that arises at moments of perceived external threat. When pandemic management becomes a matter of state legitimacy, rival states also use it as a delegitimization tool in the international system. Interstate rivalry leads states to withhold information and abstain from financial contributions on issues like public health and environmental protection.
There is no such thing as the ‘China model’ in pandemic management for two reasons. One, it is a dynamic process and China, like other countries and international organizations, developed solutions to the issues as they arose. The second wave of infections after the lockdown ended is a case in point. Second, there are differences across measures against COVID-19 geographically and in terms of administrative scale within China. China’s methods that combine the control of outbreak with social control were sometimes criticized by public health experts. Yet, the methods criticized for limiting individual freedom are the ones in the regions with high confirmed case rates. Measures that minimize community transmission are based on trust. Measures praised by the World Health Organization (WHO) are more commonly replicated in other countries as well. Unlike the Chinese phone app that combines data voluntarily offered by citizens and those collected by the local state through various means, the Korean application primarily relies on self-declared and hospital data. Nevertheless, the phone application system developed in China is mainly based on individuals’ own statements and trust in the community.
An analysis of how the modern state functions reveals that the dichotomy between authoritarian and democratic regimes but does not sufficiently explain how the disaster management measures transform state-society relations. Studies conducted since the last quarter of the 20th century revealed that one of the methods that modern state apparatus relies on is the technology of power called governmentality. Governmentality is the self-governing of individuals within the framework that the state draws for them. According to this, even when the government adopts authoritarian policies, it relies upon the cooperation of individuals within a network. Another task of the government is to produce or oversee the production of the technical knowledge that renders these policies implementable. Therefore, the functioning of the state apparatus of the so-called democratic and undemocratic countries, including China, is similar in some respects.
Certain measures against the COVID-19 pandemic in China, such as citizens voluntarily providing their travel and health information through phone applications, are examples of governmentality. By voluntarily providing their personal data, citizens reinforce the surveillance function of the state apparatus and therefore reproduce the state power. In other words, in some cases, surveillance, which is otherwise associated with authoritarianism, is achieved with the active and voluntary participation of people. Even in authoritarian states, the government relies not only on policing but also the tactics termed governing at a distance. Pointing out the methods of governing at a distance is not the same as claiming that China’s civil society is fully able to constrain the state. Governing at a distance means even the most centralized, top-down or authoritarian states enlist the consenting citizenry in pandemic management and the methods of governmentality go beyond the dichotomy between democratic and non-democratic regimes. Overall, crisis management as governmentality mobilizes society and encourages citizens to reflect upon their own actions, such as their health and welfare.
As COVID-19 reached the scale of a pandemic, many countries have now faced the challenge of developing their own public health policies. The Chinese, South Korean, Taiwanese and German ‘models’ are praised as successful examples. What would be the long-term impact of the Chinese measures on state-society relations if it is taken as a model by the developing world? How would these public health models shape the international system? Would it lead to further globalization, localization or regionalization? Given the current balance of power, China’s own bilateral and regional relations would not suffice to establish its public health measures as a global model. Development and promotion of such models in global governance requires the endorsement of international organizations. International organizations offer ‘best practices’ and ‘benchmarks’ after crises such as COVID-19. The certification and standardization of a set of measures by international organizations such as the WHO allows member states to adopt these policies and to follow transnational regimes.
The WHO’s praise for China’s measures against the COVID-19 pandemic is an important step towards the formation of an anonymized ‘model’ that goes beyond the country of origin. While transnational regimes and models are beyond national affiliations, the country that advocates for it still benefits from the widespread adaptation of it in terms of soft power. China has been investing in such soft power moves in the last decade. It is an active member of the global movement against climate change, especially since the US withdrew from the UN Climate Summit. China dominates the market for green technologies globally. Similarly, China’s role in the UN Human Rights Council is growing since the withdrawal of the US. China lobbies for categorization of developmental rights including social and economic rights as basic human rights besides political and legal rights. The COVID-19 pandemic might help China to play a pioneering role in global public health regimes.
Having their models endorsed by an international organization is a legitimation strategy for many states in Global South. While the plurality of contenders democratizes transnational normative regimes, the abstraction of locally-based models in the process of internationalization also makes them less applicable. For example, China’s pandemic management model relies on a heavy-handed application of quarantine and lockdown. There is an ongoing debate on the effectiveness and political implications of quarantines since the Ebola pandemic. The scientific community has not reached a consensus on such measures which makes them even more of a skeptical political decision.
