Zhang Weiwei (张维为)
Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House (上海人民出版社), 2020
Reviewed by Shashwat Singh (Ph.D. candidate Jawaharlal Nehru University, HYI Visiting Fellow)
China’s War Against the Pandemic by Zhang Weiwei (中国战疫 – 张维为) takes the Covid-19 pandemic as a test case for comparing the Chinese and the Western political systems. The book’s central thesis is that the Chinese model of socialism with Chinese characteristics performed better than Western liberal democracies in dealing with the epidemic. Zhang’s work dwells on three major themes: one, the anti-epidemic approach of China and the West and their consequences; two, the broader conflict between China and the West understood in terms of differences between values, worldviews, and perceptions of each other; and three, competing Chinese and Western visions of the emerging international order.
One Virus, Two Political Systems
Zhang claims that China dealt with the pandemic more effectively than the West. In his view, the Chinese approach was successful because of the Chinese state capacity, rapid mobilization of resources, emergency measures such as citywide lockdowns, authoritative control over information channels, and strict control over people’s movement to curb the spread of COVID-19. In contrast, the West suffered from a lack of state capacity, divisions of democracy, power of capital and pursuit of profit over and above people’s lives, rampant disinformation and a deep crisis of political leadership.
The book was published in 2020 during the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak when strict lockdowns had curbed the spread in China, and Zhang could claim Chinese success. In retrospect, it is not entirely clear that the Chinese model was so successful after all. Later in the pandemic, when lockdowns were lifted after Chinese public outrage against the zero-Covid policy, COVID-19 spread quickly and with disastrous consequences. An information blackout since then has meant that the true rates of infection and mortality cannot be fixed authoritatively. Zhang does not engage with international criticism of China’s initial concealment of the new virus and complaints about the continuous lack of transparency.
It is valid that the Western world was inadequately prepared to deal with a global pandemic. Precious time was lost during the initial months of the outbreak due to a lack of an objective assessment of the epidemic in China. Without effective anti-epidemic measures from the beginning, health systems across the West buckled under pressure. The politicization of the pandemic and political partisanship on the issue only made matters worse, especially in the US. However, to interpret it as a failure of state capacity and democracy does not explain why the same Western world could deploy its scientific resources to design, develop, and administer vaccines at a record time at great speeds. In hindsight, it is not clear that China was particularly more successful than the West; even using the words success vis-à-vis the pandemic belies the utter failure of healthcare worldwide.
How the West Sees China – The Tragedy of Great Power Misperceptions
On the issue of China-West relations and the sources of conflict between them, Zhang identifies that the West lacks an objective framework to understand and interpret China. Four key aspects prejudice the West’s reading of China.
First, the Western “theory of democratic superiority” creates a simplistic democratic-autocratic dichotomy. The logic unfolds: a democratic superior West has nothing to learn from an authoritarian China. Second, “the theory of individual rights” means that personal freedoms triumph over social needs, and there is no balance between rights and responsibilities. Third, “the theory of racial superiority” often leads to the scapegoating of others. In the case of the pandemic, it was China that was scapegoated, as the racialized language of phrases such as “the real sick man of Asia,” “China virus,” and “the disease of the yellow races” makes sufficiently clear. Finally, “the theory of China’s medical backwardness” creates an image of Chinese medical practices and healthcare measures as unscientific.
These frameworks deeply prejudice Western perceptions of China. Their logic makes it impossible to understand China in a non-ideological, non-racial, and unbiased manner. This is probably the strongest portion of Zhang’s work and demands the greatest attention.
One World, Two Competing Worldviews for the Emerging International Order
Towards conclusion, the book offers an analysis of the present in which the world faces three major sets of challenges arising from a) changing great power configurations, b) the new industrial revolution, and c) a clash of civilizations. Here, Zhang appears to echo Xi Jinping, who often speaks of “great changes unseen in a century.” At this juncture, the United States and China offer two worldviews for the emerging order.
In Zhang’s portrayal, China believes in a community of shared destiny, non-zero-sum thinking and win-win cooperation. In contrast, the West operates with the premise of zero-sum thinking, producing unintended consequences of great power security competition and the self-fulfilling prophecy of an inevitable clash of Civilizations. Unlike the West, Zhang adds, China does not have a tradition of militarism nor a history of religious wars.
Zhang Weiwei’s book offers a divergent perspective on world politics, a Chinese one, and might sound unfamiliar to the Western ear, at times even an unpleasant one. Nonetheless, it opens a critical window into how China perceives the world. It draws attention to Western blind spots that mar an objective understanding of China. Overall, it is a checkered account, a polemical exercise against the West and biased towards China. Read with those caveats; it provides a useful, usually missing perspective. As far as the pandemic or worldviews are concerned – Zhang’s neat dichotomies of a successful China and a failing West, or a friendly China and an unfriendly US – these are not the book’s strong points. If there are important lessons to be taken from the pandemic, I am unsure if they are as simplistic as Zhang would have us believe.