Like everything related to China, the discourse around how the country has responded to the pandemic is polarised to the extreme. China is either deluded by an impossible obsession with zero covid; or it's an example of humanity's ability to triumph over the virus. 1/

What has been largely missing from the discussion of China's pandemic response is an interest in trying to understand what has happened in China, why it has happened, and the implications for the people there. Instead, China has become a way to make a point. 2/

China is either used as proof that attempting to suppress viral transmission inevitably results in increasingly violently enforced lockdowns and authoritarian surveillance; Or it is used as evidence that the virus could be defeated if we just had the will. 3/

The truth is simultaneously more complex and banal. Chinese governance is fragmented, with local officials trying to balance often vague policy imperatives from above with local realities. This results in heterogenous policy implementation—not ideal for addressing a pandemic. 4/

This is why I (and I think many others) assumed China was in real trouble as Wuhan went into lockdown. I personally did not think that local policy implementation in China was up to the task of suppressing (let alone eliminating) a pandemic of this nature. 5/

But I was wrong about that. And China did manage to bring covid under control in 2020. What is the lesson? Does it mean China has some superior form of pandemic governance? No. I think the lesson is that it was easier to contain the original strain of covid than we thought. 6/

Now we see China confronting omicron, and the human toll of their strategy to stay covid free becomes more acute with each wave. Does this mean they are entranced by an extremist zero covid ideology, or determined to lock up their population indefinitely? 7/

I think we get a much better understanding of what is happening in China if we think of the situation from the perspective of different levels of government. 8/

From the perspective of the central government, a nationwide omicron wave would be devastating. Healthcare would be overwhelmed, millions would die, millions more would have debilitating long-term illness. 9/

If places like Hong Kong and Shanghai get overwhelmed, imagine 2nd and 3rd tier cities with far fewer resources and much less capacity for enforcement. 10/

As such, it is unsurprising that covid suppression has been made a central priority. But what then of local governments? 11/

Well, they need to take the imperative to suppress/eliminate covid seriously. At the same time they need to balance a host of local realities as well as other policy priorities. At different levels of governance officials are feeling pressure coming from different directions. 12/

There are some things they cannot ignore. Direct orders for how some tasks are to be carried out. There are also various tools that were already in development prior to the pandemic—such as digital surveillance—that can be developed to serve the current policy focus. 13/

At the same time, local officials are acutely aware of their own limitations, and surely the vast majority of them are not interested in indefinitely locking their constituents in their homes, as they are the ones who will have to deal with the discontent. 14/

During lockdowns local officials find themselves between a rock and a hard place, balancing the need to suppress spread with all the logistical problems of trying to keep healthcare working and providing daily necessities for people trapped in their homes. 15/

And this is before we even get to the issue of migrant workers and other citizens who do not have the formal right of residence in the localities—groups that are marginalised in the best of times and face very grim prospects in periods of crisis. 16/

So, to sum up, rather than using China as an exclamation point to emphasise our pandemic perspectives, it would be much more fruitful to try to understand what the pandemic has meant for Chinese governance and the experiences of different groups in the country. 17/

There are still a lot of things that I don't understand about how China has responded to the pandemic, and I expect a lot of important research to come out over the coming years that will provide insights crucial for understanding what is happening in China and beyond. 18/