Overview

The coronavirus pandemic that broke out in 2019 has finally calmed down in China, after the bungling occasioned by the iron hand of lockdown. But beginning in March 2020, the disaster spread abroad, and at present there is no end in sight. Discussions of the changes the pandemic brings to the world, and how ""plagues change history,"" are a hot topic everywhere. In this book, Prof. Qin Hui offers a stunning reflection on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on political institutions, which are well worth pondering for both China and the West. China, with its ""low human rights advantage,"" has achieved success in imposing coercive lockdowns that got the virus under control after the disastrous outbreak in Wuhan, but it will be a challenge to prevent the normalization of emergency measures from worsening human right conditions in normal times. The West, handicapped by its ""high human rights (dis)advantage,"" must learn how a democracy can efficiently enter a state of emergency and put an end to these measures at the proper time.

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Qin's book is a stunning reflection on the successes and failures of fighting the coronavirus in China and the rest of the world. As always, his goal is to cut through the rhetoric, the finger-pointing, and the chest-thumping to get to the simple, if chilling, crux of the issue.

Author Information

Qin Hui is Retired Professor in Department of History at Tsinghua University, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and aleading historian and public intellectual in China. His research focus includes economic and agrarian history of China. David Ownby is Professor of History at the Université de Montréal. His research focus is intellectual life in contemporary China, and his recent publications include Rethinking China's Rise by Xu Jilin (as editor and translator), Voices from the Chinese Century (co?edited with Timothy Cheek and Joshua A. Fogel), and The Transcendental and the Mundane by Choyun Hsu (as translator). His online project, ""Reading the China Dream,"" is available at readingthechinadream.com.

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