Run into your professor of history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford and balloons across College Oxford.
Welcome to some cross conscience. Thanks so much, Stanley. It's a real pleasure to be here on St Cross College shorts.
It's now about a year since the start of the covered 19 pandemic. You've been following China's response to Cope 19.
I hope you brought your expertise in the history, politics of trying to bear on this new problem.
I would say that, of course, we all realise that whether it's China or the rest of the world,
the Koven 19 pandemic is first and foremost a medical issue.
And it's wonderful that our own colleges and Cross, of course,
has one of the premier scientists press, Andrew Poulard, who's involved with that side of things.
So I wouldn't want to suggest an analysis of the epidemic in terms of its cultural and
social context is necessarily quite as much at the cutting edge as the actual epidemiology.
But having said that, I think it is important to try and understand the way in which China's response to the pandemic,
the way in which it's been said, was quite confrontational with the outside world and the phenomenon which lots of people, in fairness,
have noticed, which is China's ability to control the pandemic, have all come together over the past few months.
And what I've tried to do is to use my longer perspective as a specialist on 20th century Chinese history with a
particular interest in the 1930s and 40s to look at some of the culturally specific ways that China's dealt with it.
Just to give one quick example now to to set the tone, Stanley, over and over again during the course of this year,
I've seen that metaphors or analogies being used by the Chinese party state,
the Communist Party frequently turned to metaphors that are taken from China's experience of World War Two.
So one example is that when the pandemic broke out, President Xi Jinping back in February, March,
talked about the state waging what he called a Remington drunk people's war against the virus,
which is a phrase taken straight out of Chairman Mao or Mao Zedong's policies against the Japanese back in the 1930s and 40s.
And more recently, I think it's fair to say that China, China's state councillor, young future, has talked about China's foreign policy more broadly,
which includes but is not limited to dealing with the aftermath of it is going to be a shoujo Jan,
a protracted war, which actually doesn't mean, literally, we hope, a war with bullets or bombs,
but rather a protracted campaign of the sort that someone like Chairman Mao really advocated quite specifically back in the 30s.
So that use of the kind of metaphor that Chinese leaders will leap to,
I think tells us quite a lot in a sort of microcosm about the way that they think about the challenge of Kofod 19,
both at home and in terms of the way that it's changed the way that China deals with the world.
So it's a quite wide ranging and ongoing story. It's really interesting.
How did China treat the outbreak?
Well, I think it's clear that there have been phases in the way that China had dealt with the outbreak of the pandemic, the 19 pandemic.
And I think it's fair to say that even fair minded Chinese observers would say that the initial phase was not impressive.
Essentially, we know the first outbreak that we know how I know of was in the city of one city.
There's actually very famous to China historians because it was the site,
amongst other things, of the 1911 revolution that overthrew the last emperor.
But I think it's fair to say that if you're not a China specialist, then one was not perhaps one of the best-known of Chinese cities,
even though, of course, it's its large and important when it suddenly became globally famous because that's where the virus emerged.
And it's now very clear we know this because the Chinese authorities have openly said so
that the local authorities in one basically covered up a great deal of what was going on,
a strange, increasingly virulent new disease, which they couldn't identify.
They thought it might have been a form of Saar's. I think, you know, one of those pandemics with the early teeth or epidemics from the early 2000s.
But when people reporting it online or to the authorities, they were basically told it to keep quiet.
And it was sometime later than that that actually China's prime minister, Lico Chan,
openly said to local officials that they needed to stop hiding what was was being said about the pandemic and bringing out of the open,
which was about as official an admission as you get that the first phase had been badly handled.
But I think it's fair to say that did change quite quickly,
not least because there was a real sense that China could essentially be broken by the virus if this virus was allowed to run very, very much.
A monkey might say amongst this wider population, this country of one point three billion people, then essentially its economy, its society.
All of that would essentially run the danger of being shut down. And so it was really a sort of life saving mission for the regime to have to think
about how they were going to control this unexpected and deadly new disease.
How did it get control of it? Well, with some methods that I have to say would be both hard and indeed undesirable
to reproduce in a country like our own with a more liberal political system.
A lot of what was done was done essentially with coercion. We've seen many of us, I think the news pictures of what happened in certain cities,
including Wahhab, which was essentially a complete lockdown of the entire city, you know.
Public transportation was stopped in and out of the city. Most of it, I think, was stopped within the city as well.
Actually, you couldn't re drive around during that time. There's even footage in some cases of people being forcibly removed from their homes for
treatment or in some cases paying barricaded in almost like a plague house in the old days.
So this was pretty hardcore tactics that were being used in terms of the tactics against the virus back in the spring of this year.
And we know there was a great deal of calamus callousness in the response.
In some cases, you know, people were not allowed to have the bodies of the dead to mourn a kind of collective good
was exercised as a means of riding roughshod over at least some individual's rights.
But I think it is fair to say this.
You could argue that in its own terms, it was highly effective because by the summer it was clear that the pandemic had essentially contracted.
It had made its way down to manageable levels within China. There was, of course, a major quarantine,
which meant that overseas visitors or Chinese coming back from outside China to the country itself had to undergo.
They still do, in fact, two weeks of pretty harsh quarantine to get into the country.
So in a sense, control of the virus was gained by a combination of coercive methods where necessary,
although they did have a lot of kind of national support when they realised they were working,
combined with essentially cutting the country off in many ways from the outside world and as we speak now in December of 2020.
That situation hasn't still entirely changed.
It's still very hard to go in and out of China if you're not willing to go through the quarantine, which,
of course, very few visitors would be prepared to do so locking the country down and closing the borders.
What did that do to China's diplomacy?
Well, one of the most notable elements, Stanley, or the way in which China has projected itself to the world during 2020,
is that it's managed to combine a domestic policy success.
I'll use the word success because I think those of us who are in regular contact online with China will see and,
you know, honestly admit that the virus does seem to be genuinely under control and in China at the moment.
But that combined with an extremely confrontational international diplomacy, bear in mind that last year, 2019,
wasn't exactly a fantastic year for Chinese diplomacy, but there was a certain amount of effort through the Belt and Road initiative.
In other words,
this project bring billions of dollars worth of infrastructure payments to a swathe of territory from Western Europe through to Southeast
Asia through an attempt to try and create a greater role for China in international institutions and in the era of Donald Trump.
There was a slightly more open goal for China to do that. All of those efforts were bearing a certain limited amount of fruit.
I would say that on almost all of those, China, at least in the short term,
has gone backward in 2020 because it's decided to adopt a highly confrontational
style of diplomacy with overseas enquiries about what's happening with the virus.
And the prime example of this is the efforts by the Australians, in fact,
to argue for an international treaty and an international committee of investigation that will go to China and enquire about the origins of the virus.
Now, I think more pragmatic countries would have said was the effect of this is a fantastic idea and then either
find ways to delay or avoid such a commission or else make sure that friendly countries are involved.
But for reasons that aren't entirely clear, China decided it was going to sort of go full flamethrower on this.
And not only has offered some pretty harsh words to Australia in rhetorical terms through its foreign ministry,
but also started putting boycotts on particular America, Australian imports into the Chinese economy.
And I think that that has been typical of something. It's become nicknamed Wolf Warrior diplomacy.
That's really one of the words of 2020 from the point of view of Chinese diplomacy.
It's taken from a movie, actually, two movies, Wolf Warrior and Wolf Warrior two,
which were absolute blockbusters at the Chinese box office in the mid 2010s.
And they basically tell a story of kind of Chinese special forces rescuing hapless, helpless Chinese citizens stuck in parts of Africa.
And then quickly, because a Chinese version of Rambo and this phrase, Jan Long, Wolf Warrior, has been used, not least by the Chinese themselves,
describe the way in which they've been using the crises to project China to the outside world as a
country that doesn't want to hear it anymore from the wider world about what China getting role.
They only want to hear what China's done right now.
That said, that, some of China's most experienced diplomats, including the ambassador, the United States tweeting,
Kai, have been saying quite loudly and publicly that they do not think this is a good idea.
Alienating every other country through a series of diplomatic tantrums is a very bad way to build alliances and partnerships,
which, of course, China, like any other country, is trying to do at the moment.
But for now, this very strong, confrontational tone has really taken over Chinese diplomacy, at least the most visible parts of it.
And I think that a major reason for that is this feeling of besiegement of in some ways, you know, being forced to account for themselves.
That came because of the COGAT pandemic.
I think that level of shrillness would have been less likely to emerge in a world where the pandemic never went global.
So do you think the Koper 19 has been a win or lose overall for China?
Is it possible to speculate about it? Is a. Impossible, possible speculate about it.
Naturally, one of the kind of parlour games or most of of commentators, both within China and the outside world, I have to confess,
I've done a bit of this myself, is to try and work out, you know, who's doing best and who's doing worst in terms of where we go from here.
And on the plus side, for China, you could argue that, for instance,
through the figures that we have, the economy has bounced back relatively quickly.
It's still well below what it was a year ago.
But it's one of the few countries in the world to show positive growth in third quarter and possibly the fourth quarter as well of this year.
That's partly because in a lesson for the rest of us, if you do get the virus under control, it's easier for, say,
domestic consumers to feel confident about going to restaurants or hotels or taking holidays or all
the things that we generally consider normal and which are beginning to happen in China once again.
So in that context,
I think it's fair to say that China has managed to get back on its feet and start to normalise life in some ways that have been quite impressive.
You might also say that from the point of view of the Chinese Communist Party,
which is always desperate to get as much data and surveillance on people as possible,
it's provided the perfect excuse through people's smartphones to have even more reasons to track and trace absolutely everything that people do,
using, of course, the argument that you have to do it for reasons of public health.
But giving the public security institutions a huge amount of data that they can then use to also trace people for political or social reasons.
On the other hand, I think the downsides have been considerable as well.
If you look at most reliable international polling, including from respect to groups like Pew,
which actually does do polling inside China as well, China's international reputation has really suffered very badly from the Cold 19 pandemic.
First of all, because of the reality that regardless of where the virus originated, it did first appear publicly in China.
And that's something that can't just be wished away. But at the same time, it's also the case that because China has gotten this very shrill,
confrontational way of dealing with the aftermath of the virus,
it's going to be something that essentially shapes that way in which China talks to the outside world for quite a long time.
But one final note I'd I'd add, and this is something that I think is still sort of a work in progress,
so to speak, is that China is not trying to push back by using what it calls the health Silk Road.
So using that kind of old idea of the Silk Road,
but adding health to it by which referring to its own vaccine rollout, in part, certain countries in the Middle East,
Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates have been doing tryouts of the son of farm and son of VAK vaccines, which have been produced by Chinese labs.
And this is one effort by China to kind of seise control of the narrative for the
next phase and portray itself not just as the country that originated the virus,
but also one that's been working hard to try and bring it under control outside its own borders as well as inside.
You know, a number of issues, public health and surveillance for all concerned about that.
And in this climate of discourse about the West, can you talk a little bit more about that?
We've been able to dig into that a little bit more.
I think it's clear that China has for some time been looking to try and create a system of government
in which authoritarian government is combined with high levels of technological capability.
And so the way which is generally being put forward is through the phrase social credit.
And this is something that you may hear as a kind of some catch phrase which combines a whole variety of different factors within it,
by which I mean that it's a system which overall in some at some point not yet achieved,
is supposed to sort of combine databases of people's financial behaviour,
their economic activities and their political behaviour, as well as what is kind of personal habits.
And if people kind of commit frauds or if they're known for not paying their debts, then these sorts of things will be put into the mix.
And so to do that, you have to have a state that basically can collect and collate huge amounts of data.
And because China has become, you know, one of the world's most funds' cashless societies and everyone pays for everything on their phone,
everyone passes the bars, the KUAR strip when they want to get into a shop or organisation, whatever it might be.
All of these means of gathering huge amounts of data have been very much embraced by the party state, the Chinese Communist Party state.
But the covered 19 pandemic has, of course,
given rocket boosters to this idea because it's become compulsory to give so much information about yourself.
It also helps the state to gather the huge amounts of data that can help build a state which not yet,
but eventually might have the capacity to monitor and track individual citizens
behaviours in ways that in liberal societies would be considered beyond the bounds.
And secondly, Chinese economies bounce back rather well. Do you think is carried on that way?
Will go next? Well, I think the Chinese economy is bouncing back, but it's by no means at the point that it was even a year ago.
And there are some potentially worrying signs from the Chinese point of view.
I mentioned the Belt and road initiative before, and it's worth noting that China's overseas lending, which was getting very considerable in the last,
you know, five to 10 years, really dropped off a cliff during this year, just gone past unsurprising.
You know, if you are going to have an economic crisis,
then not spending money overseas is one of the first first things that you may do to try and sort of draw in your horns.
But at the same time. Since that overseas spending is both a large part of the global element of China's economic model and also courses
that try and create goodwill amongst societies that otherwise are not necessarily very friendly towards China.
You could say that that's quite a significant loss. Overall, I think it's clear that China is very keen to, as other countries are,
in fact, to try and bring back as much domestic production as possible.
I think they sort of feel that the era of globalisation was shown to be in some ways very fragile by the Kovik 19 pandemic.
And what they'd like to have in what's called dual circulation strategy for the economy is to have a sort of magic combination in which
the domestic economy is almost entirely contained at home and can be controlled by the party and keeps the engine of the economy going.
But also, China has this huge ability to trade globally as well.
The problem is that global supply chain, supply chains and the global economy doesn't really work in the way that enables you to
sort of carve out your own domestic system entirely separately from the global one.
So in the end, I think that this proposal for China's economic model in the next few years is as
much a political model as it is one that economists would actually stand behind.
So you've mentioned a number of ways in which Carbon 19 is likely to change China.
Can you say a little bit more about how you think it will change its relationship with the world?
I think over 19 is going to have a major effect on the way in which China is perceived by the world and China deals with the world.
And I'm sorry to say that least in the short term, I think that it's probably going to freeze relations in some quite important ways.
I think that, first of all,
part of the problem lies in the fact that because the Cauvin 19 pandemic has caused economic chaos in so many societies around the world,
and because we're living in a nationalist and protectionist time overall,
it's likely that governments around the world are going to be prioritising their own domestic economies first.
And I think falling prey to what in part is a sort of fallacy that only domestic production,
only looking after people at home, only America first, Britain first, China first is the way to go.
I think that makes it tougher for China to be able to actually create those
alliances and connexions it needs to really rise to greater power in the world.
You know, the United States is also something of an inward looking mood. It's decided to elect Joe Biden rather than Donald Trump.
And maybe that's a sign that it's going to engage with the world again.
But let's be honest, Joe Biden's made it clear that he has a lot of priorities at home as well in the United States.
But the difference is that the US has had 70 years since World War Two.
Seventy five years to build up a whole variety of relationships that even if
they were in some ways undermined somewhat during the Trump administration,
they were not necessarily damaged permanently. A lot of the rest of the world still willing to give America the benefit of the doubt.
But China has never actually had the time or need much of an inclination to build up those sorts of formal alliances.
Any true partners it really has.
North Korea formally, it's a very difficult sort of partner and then warm relations with a few countries like Pakistan,
but not really a wide range of countries that, you know, when push comes to shove, really, we'll put out for red for China.
So, you know, China's money is important. The VRA funding is important. The idea of China as a market is important.
If the signs continue to be that China is going to be essentially,
in some ways closing its borders rather than opening them up both literally and metaphorically,
then I think that in the short term that will be quite damaging for China.
So really, in some ways it's up to Beijing. Beijing often complains that Washington is the worst enemy that China has.
Actually, I think many of China's abilities to move to a more productive next phase are entirely in China's hands.
It can be an economically productive power. It decides that it will step back from a lot of the more coercive, militaristic side of what it's doing.
And I think that that would create confidence in the wider world that over time would actually be hugely beneficial to China.
I would also get it much closer to what it really wants,
which is to be the power in East Asia in its own backyard that people want to team up with rather than
feeling that they have to because of the size of its market or because of the size of its military.
In the end, that's sort of elusive soft power. The idea that China can get people to go along with it because they want to, not because they have to.
That's still very elusive. And I think it will take quite a lot of work after cohered for China to get to
even an inkling of a position where that's the way that it's perceived to.