NOA Episode 10: Pandemic Public Health Policies and State Governance: Blurred Grounds Between Authoritarian Regimes and Liberal Democracies
Host: Angela Zhou
BBI Research Team: Leo Krapp (Research Team Leader), Aiden Chan, Jasrene Hor, Hugo Claus, Afek Shamir
Angela: Hi everyone and welcome back to Narratives of Asia. I'm Angela, Publications Officer at UCL Asiatic Affairs and a second-year European Social and Political Studies student, and I’ll be your host for today.
On another episode of Narratives of Asia, we have the pleasure of having with us our affiliate research team from Bentham Brooks Institute. For those of you who are new to BBI, this is a newly established student-led Think Tank formed by an alliance of five of the biggest international affairs societies at UCL, and which encompasses a bespoke research program producing peer-reviewed, high-quality research policy papers, aimed to influence policymakers at influential figures.
By the time of publishing this episode, the team would have finished that policy paper which should then be available to read online. It's a pleasure to have the team here with us and before we properly begin, would you all like to just quickly introduce yourselves, your role with BBI, and perhaps a few sentences to summarize your research topic?
Aiden: Hi, everyone. I'm Aiden. I'm a second-year history student and I'm a researcher at BBI.
Jasrene: Hi everyone, I'm Jasrene and I’m a year one economics student and I’m a researcher at BBI too.
Hugo: Hi, everyone. I'm Hugo, I'm a second-year history student at UCL as well, and I'm a research member at the BBI.
Leo: Hi guys, I’m Leo. I am the research lead for this project and I am a third-year anthropology student. Just to give a brief summary of our project, we are affiliated with Asiatic affairs and the overarching umbrella theme is the state of democracy and authoritarianism in Asia. Our project specifically was going to look at the recent coronavirus crisis in the context of political ideology, digital surveillance and public health policy.
Angela: Yeah, thank you for that, and thank you for joining me today. It’s actually quite timely that we're having this conversation today because it was about a year ago when countries were protecting their first case of COVID, followed shortly by national lockdowns around the world. So obviously, evidently, much has changed since then.
Kind of working our way backwards from your research paper, what conclusions did you draw from this comparison between the Asian states and also Western liberal democracies?
Leo: If we're going to speak broadly about the conclusions we've drawn, we'd have to start off by prioritizing our findings of forms of governance and political ideology. We were trying to conduct a more nuanced comparison of Western liberal democracy with Asian forms of governance and authoritarianism and socialism in some cases.
The reason why we chose our three countries, which are China, India, and Taiwan, is because we thought it provided a more complex picture of the state of politics in Asia. The broad conclusions, I guess, would be that there is a significant difference in the way that authoritarianism and liberal democracy conduct themselves in the face of public health crises, the kind of tools they deploy, as well as the strategies and the responses from civic society and other international parties.
Angela: Looking at the forms of governance and political ideologies, and also looking at the tools that they deploy, do you think there's a correlation between the state regime type and the state capacity?
Aiden: There definitely is a difference between the two: the state capacity with authoritarian regimes are definitely bigger but whether they are willing to employ that in response to the crisis is a question. Even though for most liberal democracies, the state capacities are smaller, they're more willing to employ it in response to public health crises, as we have seen in Taiwan.
Angela: On the back of the topic of ‘willingness’, if we were to focus it on China, with what we’ve seen from the very beginning, deployed through media portrayal as a form of ‘mask diplomacy’, to the recent politicisation of vaccination rollout, what does China's style and approach to diplomacy tell us about its national priorities? How has this approach been received domestically as well as internationally?
Jasrene: So I personally feel that China has embarked on an extensive and very highly coordinated propaganda campaign to try and establish itself as a global leader in containing the virus outbreak. So if we can look at China's ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy, where they actually leverage social media tools to spread misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus and discredit the responses of democratic governments in European and Western countries. So for instance, we had Chinese Prime Minister spokesman Zhao Lijian, prompting the conspiracy theory that the US soldiers were the ones who brought the virus to Wuhan - that really shows how China is trying to leverage on this public health crisis to expand its authoritarian practices abroad and try to change the pandemic narrative.
Aiden: In terms of how it's received domestically, overall, the citizens of China definitely view the state response favourably. However, this is in contrast with the international community where the general perception is one of mistrust. Even though, as seen in polls, people say some of China's response is effective, how they went about it is not exactly the right way, which helped generate a sense of mistrust.
With mask diplomacy, I think it's definitely what Jasrene just said about China trying to change the narrative. As we have seen, at the beginning of the pandemic, the overall approach was to cover up, such as by the silencing of dissidents as well as the banning of virus buzz words on the social media platform Weibo.
Angela: Okay, so looking at China's ulterior motives and trying to change the pandemic narrative abroad, surely, with Taiwan, Taiwan also purchased some sort of mask diplomacy in sending a lot of masks abroad, sending supplies abroad because they were coping with it so well - how does this compare?
Jasrene: We personally feel that Taiwan’s COVID-19 response was more of a democratic response because they actually framed the COVID-19 infodemic as a public health crisis and tried to adopt a transparent digital governance system where they worked with citizens to tackle the spread of COVID-19.
We can actually look at Taiwan's culture of hacktivism, where the entrepreneurs and hacktivists, collaborated to create platforms for citizens to share collective intelligence and participate in a fight against COVID-19. I think this really shows how the Taiwanese government tries to facilitate public participation. And I think this really helps to encourage civic engagement, which allows it to gain support among the Taiwanese populace.
Hugo: And I would add that the success of the Taiwanese response to the pandemic has made it a very kind of important case study for a lot of countries to see what sort of values and what sort of principles can you export from that country. Taiwan, I think, has tried to go into the international community to offer its help, because I think it has a lot to teach. However, I think China has kind of impeded on these Taiwanese efforts to contribute to the global effort to fight this pandemic.
Angela: It's easy to kind of term liberal democracies as open and transparent, and also their emphasis on civic engagement but, and I think you mentioned at some point in your paper about the authoritarian advantage, it's undeniable that China's response to COVID has been effective. Often it’s been mentioned as a matter of compliance, where Asian states have an authoritarian mentality and people are more obedient and have more trust in the state, but when we're looking at the case study that you mentioned in India, what role does this (‘the authoritarian advantage’) play its pandemic response?
Hugo: I think India is a kind of difficult case to assess against this sort of statement because I think that the government has used this pandemic as an excuse to pursue other interests rather than those of the public health of its population. Most of India's measures have been aimed at restricting liberties and infringing on individual freedoms, and that's part of an effort on Narendra Modi’s and the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government, since 2014, to pursue this kind of Hindu-nationalist agenda, which also has some authoritarian tendencies. And we saw a few days ago that the Swedish Institute of democracy stopped classifying India as a democracy.
I think it's difficult to assess the statement that you said, because India's response, and the measures that they have put in place, have not been aimed at properly fighting the virus and also supporting the overall population.
Leo: I think Hugo was spot on with that answer and I wanted to add as well, this question of India, you can’t talk about liberal democracy without talking about illiberal democracy. And this idea that the two have recently come into conflict. That is democracy and typical liberal ideals.
The phrase illiberal democracy, I think, is a confusing one, but it's especially relevant these days. India, Hungary, Poland, among others, are examples where certain Western ideals of liberalism have clashed with a democratic structuring of politics. The other thing Hugo mentioned was Hindu nationalism, which I think is partially responsible for eroding the infrastructure of democracy in India. It's a very important case study for the rest of the world to see how a liberal democracy can very quickly become both not liberal and not democratic.
Angela: And just in the back of that we mentioned ‘what’ the other interests are, but how are they pursuing these interests? In this whole idea of the world progressively moving towards a digital surveillance model, how is this manifesting in India or other case studies that you've looked into?
Hugo: I think the first thing that shows that India has been pursuing other interests in its kind of coronavirus pandemic response has been the fact that in order to supposedly stop spreading false information about the pandemic, the Indian government has put severe limits on free media expression and this has been supplemented by other measures such as setting up coronavirus Track and Trace app, which is firstly obligatory for everybody and has very serious security concerns which haven’t been addressed at all by the Indian government. That just feeds into this different aspiration of this current government who has also closed down parliament because supposedly it's not safe for all parliament members to convene in the same assembly, even though most countries in the world with a democratic Parliament have been able to do so.
India has focused its coronavirus pandemic response on infringing on individual rights and freedoms rather than addressing the key issues, which is the health of the population. And they have done very little, I think, to improve infrastructure; they've done very little to stop the spread of infection in the slums. Overall, you can see that their response, I think, is motivated by different things.
Angela: Perhaps less so about the motivations but would you say that this sort of approach is unique to India, unique to these regimes in Asia or can you see similar adaptations in the democratic states?
For example, you mentioned Track and Trace, and at the moment in the UK, we're talking about vaccine passports and they have an ongoing debate in Asia regarding Health QR Codes, traffic light systems. We can tell evidently that this adaptation of digital surveillance models isn't really unique to Asia, but in a post-COVID world, what are its implications and what challenges do we face?
Leo: What kind of challenges do we face - I think it's an interesting way to frame the question. Obviously, these kinds of things are not unique to Asia. I think one of the most prominent examples in the recent public consciousness is the Patriot Act in America, passed post 911, whereby the NSA (National Security Agency) could tap any phone call that they wanted.
These kinds of concerns related to privacy in the digital realm are not new. Any attempt to play them up as potentially harmful or threatening to the west, I think, is a piece of rhetoric or local manoeuvring by American and British pundits to critique and undermine the Asian success in dealing with coronavirus. And that being said, the traffic light, QR codes, and the tools used to control the movement of people in Xinjiang, among many other methods that we elaborate on in our paper, I think, do pose serious concerns, like all infringements on individual liberty that are done over the digital realm.
I think it's unfair to say that this situation is scarier in Asia, but that being said, as Jasrene elaborated on a little bit, there is a kind of sentiment going around that is related to worries around the export of Chinese strategies to Southeast Asia, South Asia to Africa, in an attempt to expand their sphere of influence and obtain a larger role on the global stage. And these are legitimate concerns, and they need to be understood in the context of Western imperialism as well. We can't say that America hasn't been doing this for years.
Angela: Absolutely, and on the note of this whole idea of, you know, exporting Chinese strategies and Chinese authoritarian strategies to the rest of the world, in consideration of its initial approaches to COVID, and also just bringing it back to the topic of COVID, putting this into context, how effective has it strategies been?
Aiden: I think, in my opinion, it's definitely a really mixed one. Obviously, we can tell China has been bouncing back from the pandemic very quickly compared to other countries. Once it started to actually tackle the problem by allocating resources top-down, they were able to control the pandemic very effectively. That's why we can tell the numbers in China are a lot smaller than in other places in the world. But that said, because the initial responses were so ineffective, resorting to cover up and suppressing dissidents, it kind of allowed the initial outbreak to spiral out of control to begin with. So we can't say for sure that China handled the pandemic very effectively.
China definitely had the capacity to contain the virus, but it chose not to, allowing it as far as control. It's definitely a very mixed response, but overall, it's more effective than other countries in the world, I would say.
Hugo: And even though the response has been relatively successful, I think, in the middle term. In mainland Europe at least, I've seen very little questioning on whether we should possibly adopt the Chinese model of response to the pandemic. And I think that this has kind of contributed to the debate in certain societies on what is the most important value in our society; whether it's freedom, or whether it's our health, or whether it's education. And I think that clearly the way that a lot of European countries have positioned themselves, is that for them the prime value, I would say, is freedom rather than health and that has cost a lot of lives. Whilst you can see in other countries, and even democracies in Asia, such as South Korea, the fact that more authoritarian techniques have been used to address the pandemic showed that the kind of prime value in some of these societies is citizens' health.
Angela: Do you personally think that freedom and health are mutually exclusive and that you can only have one not the other?
Hugo: For now, I can only see one prime example of where freedom and health have been able to be combined so well. And I would say, for me, that's Taiwan. They were exposed to the pandemic very early on. Whilst there've been other countries who've had successful COVID responses, they haven't been as exposed as Taiwan. They were exposed very early and also took action very early. Contrary to other kinds of Asian democracies, they used their own citizens, and the free will of their citizens, to address the pandemic extremely effectively. So I would definitely say that I think Taiwan's example shows us that both of them are not mutually exclusive.
But of course, Taiwan has certain cultural distinctive features which are not present in Europe, and kind of also highlight, I mean, to a certain extent, the weakness of certain European democracies who were not as rapid and effective in their decision making, as, for example, the Taiwanese democracy.
Angela: Yeah, you identified that there are cultural factors that are quite unique to Taiwan. And I think just to, because I'm conscious of time, and we've got to wrap up the episode at some point, you mentioned some specific limitations to the research, specifically in regards to Taiwan and its unique cultural demographic, what other challenges did you face in your research process? With COVID still ongoing, did this fast-changing nature of the topic affect the research at all?
Leo: Obviously, as you mentioned, there were difficulties with the fast-changing nature of the thing we're trying to study. We do mention in the paper a number of times that this is by no means a definitive analysis or conclusive study. This is just the beginning of how the world was going to understand the effects of this public health crisis and the ideological and cultural repercussions and it's going to have
Angela: With the focus on COVID, and obviously as research lead you sort of set the tone for the research project, and also the topic and focus, what drew you to this topic at the start? And why do you think that this is, this is a question for everyone, why do you think this is a topic of relevance and why should (the listeners) go on ahead and read your paper?
Leo: As a research lead, when I was looking to apply to be part of the policy project in this Think Tank, this was the one that stood out to me. I have had an interest in the geographical region of East Asia for a while. I also have an interest in how we can study this region and do a comparative political analysis or even intellectual history to learn more about its political ideology, human governance, and ways of organizing human social infrastructures. So this is one of the reasons I got involved in this project.
And specifically, the reason why I chose to focus on the COVID pandemic is because, I think, if we have to think about the most prominent crises in recent memory, we have the.com bubble, we have the 2008 stock market crash, and I think that the two or three years following each of them were some of the most important years in the past two decades for the development of the economy, politics, and society, and I think this is going to be a significantly larger shift in the way that the world is organized.
Hugo: I would say I think the project is very relevant. I think a lot of us would say that this kind of century is the Age of Asia. Asia is becoming, I think, the most important continent on the global scene and the developments that are happening there are going to have important impacts on everybody; regardless of where they live in the world.
And it's also a region that's extremely dynamic. It's interesting to look at how there are different models that are developing from the kind of classical Western models that we have seen. So I think there are lessons to be learned, regardless of what you're interested in, even if it's not the coronavirus pandemic.
Aiden: To me, the most relevant thing about this project is the distinction between democracy and authoritarianism. But because of COVID, that line has been increasingly blurred. This project is a very good starting point for us to explore how that's going to play out in the future, as Leo said earlier. To say that COVID is the turning point of our modern society, I don't think it would be an unfair judgement, but particularly with authoritarianism and democracy, it’s one of the most important things that has happened in, let's say, the past half a century, I think.
Angela: Alright, thanks so much for joining me on our podcast today and for sharing with us your various insights and reflections on the governments of China, Taiwan and India, and their respective pandemic response. We've tried to cover as much ground as possible with quite a short episode, but there's still so much more to be discussed within this framework of democracy and authoritarianism in the context of COVID-19.
Therefore, we’d really like to recommend anyone interested in finding more about the topics mentioned to read on to their policy paper, which is now public, and also the complete BBI journal which includes research papers and findings from other affiliated research teams.
This has been Angelo, Leo, Hugo, Aiden, Jasrene who joined us earlier and Afek, who is also part of the research team but wasn’t able to join us today. Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Narratives of Asia and stay tuned for the next one.
Head over to @BenthamBrooksInstitute to find out more about UCL’s first student-led Think Tank, watch recaps from their recent conference and read their recently published policy papers!
Website: https://benthambrooks.wixsite.com/home
BBI Policy Paper: https://issuu.com/benthambrooksinstitute/docs/bbi_journal_complete_1